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American Morning

Tainted Confession in Lunsford Case?; Avoiding Holiday Bottlenecks

Aired June 30, 2005 - 08:30   ET

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

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Little product placement there for Wise Potato Chips and Pepsi. I'm sure the check's in the mail.
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Mmm, that's what I have for breakfast every morning here on AMERICAN MORNING.

M. O'BRIEN: We'll be hearing from them....

S. O'BRIEN: Kidding.

M. O'BRIEN: ... I hope.

S. O'BRIEN: We don't.

M. O'BRIEN: It's just about -- breakfast of champions, I'd say. Pepsi and a chips.

S. O'BRIEN: Well, it's basically kind of what I eat, but not now.

M. O'BRIEN: A really disturbing development as prosecutors build their case against John Couey. This shifts the tone measurably here. A man accused of murdering Jessica Lunsford in Florida.

S. O'BRIEN: You know, I think when he detailed that -- really what happened to Jessica, what he did in his confession, I think people felt it was an open and shut case. I mean, here, it's done. He confessed. And the details were horrific. Well, it turns out one of the things he also mentioned was that he wanted a lawyer. Not once, not twice, but many times. He never got one. And, of course, that sort of throws a lot of this confession now into doubt.

We're going to talk this morning to children's advocate Marc Klaas about what happens now in this case. Could he go free?

M. O'BRIEN: Hopefully...

S. O'BRIEN: Can you imagine?

M. O'BRIEN: Hopefully there are other ways to connect him to this whole thing, because...

S. O'BRIEN: Could you imagine?

M. O'BRIEN: ... to have something like that on a technicality is just outrageous. S. O'BRIEN: That's ahead.

M. O'BRIEN: All right. Let's check the headlines now. Carol Costello with that. Good morning, Carol.

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning. Good morning to all of you.

Now in the news, coalition forces have now secured the site of a U.S. helicopter crash in Afghanistan. The chopper, similar to the one shown here, crashed on Tuesday near the Pakistan border. Search team looking for the 17 crewmembers who are feared dead this morning. It's believed the aircraft was brought down by enemy fire.

Canada's health minister says his country will no longer be a, quote, "cheap drug store for the United States." He said Canada would ban the bulk the expert of prescription drugs when their supplies are low at home. Drug prices in Canada, as you know, are typically 40 percent less.

Thousands of people have been evacuated in Sydney and other parts of Eastern Australia to escape rising flood waters. Several people were rescued from stranded cars and homes. Police are looking for at least two others still missing. The downpours have also triggered landslides and power blackouts.

And CNN "Security Watch" now. Another scare in Washington. Authorities say a small private plane ventured into restricted air space and that prompted a brief evacuation. President Bush was temporarily whisked away to another location. The pilot says he entered the restricted space in order to avoid bad weather. The entire ordeal lasted just minutes, unlike the last time.

M. O'BRIEN: Well, it's a little different. This is a little difference. I mean, once he realized he was in the wrong place, he responded immediately.

COSTELLO: Well, he was already turning by the time, you know, the military jets...

M. O'BRIEN: He's just trying to avoid a little bad weather. And everybody is on such a hair trigger there.

S. O'BRIEN: Well, yes, but...we know why. All right. Carol, thanks.

COSTELLO: Sure.

Disturbing story to tell you about this morning. John Couey, you remember, here's the guy who confessed to kidnapping and raping and then burying 9-year-old Jessica Lunsford alive. It turns out his confession may never make it into court. According to documents and an audio released by Florida authorities, Couey repeatedly, repeatedly, asked to have an attorney present. Police, though, did not provide one.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

JOHN COUEY, CONFESSED TO KILLING JESSICA LUNSFORD: I said I would, I just want to talk to a lawyer. I want a lawyer here present. I want a law -- I want to talk to a lawyer. Because I mean, people are trying to accuse me of something I didn't do. I didn't do it.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

S. O'BRIEN: What could this mean for the case? Marc Klaas is the founder of beyondmissing.com, also the Klaas Kids Foundation. He's in San Francisco this morning. Marc, nice to see you, as always. Thanks for talking with us. Your first -- I guess I want to get your gut reaction when you first heard this story?

MARC KLAAS, BEYONDMISSING.COM: Well, you know, as somebody who's been in this field a long time, I get really tired of the amateurish mistakes that are made during the investigations of missing child cases. None of these things are necessary anymore. There are trained professionals. The FBI knows how to do this dead right. They should be put in charge whenever the people that are supposed to be in charge don't know what they're doing. This is obvious, as is obvious in this case.

S. O'BRIEN: Getting a lawyer -- I mean, honestly if you watched "Law and Order" once, you kind of know how to do that. You don't have to be in law enforcement to understand that. What other mistakes do you think the authorities in this case made?

KLAAS: Well, let's be clear. I mean, Americans know the pledge of allegiance and the Miranda Warning. I mean, every American knows that. But in this case -- this is the problem, Soledad. In this case, from day one, things were going wrong.

The first thing I believe they did wrong is they set up the command post at the crime scene, at the home of Mark Lunsford and his parents. That, number one, is going to violate the integrity of the crime scene and number tow, it's going to knock out any semblance that the family might have for privacy. They're not going to be able to go outside without having either cops or reporters or volunteers or lookie-loos question their every move. That's a terrible way to approach things.

Secondly, Megan's Law. Megan's Law gives law enforcement the ability to launch investigations when crimes are committed against children. It's one of the guiding principles of Megan's Law. Couey was a sex offender. Couey was supposed to be registered in Citrus County. Couey was an absconder. They went to Couey's home. They should have gone into that home, they should have asked him if they should go in, and if he said no, they should have parked themselves on that front door until they had a search warrant to do that.

Then certainly, the confession and everything that follows the confession. Everything that comes of the confession is going to be tainted evidence and may able to be thrown out. This is unbelievable. And then, finally, the search itself. They brought in search dogs. They had volunteers doing this. But after only a few days, they sent everybody home packing, leaving Mark Lunsford and his family kind of hanging by themselves in that home.

So, you know, here's the thing, Soledad. In the aftermath of Polly's kidnapping in 1993, the FBI wrote a protocol on how to investigate missing child cases. Whenever they're brought into one of these cases, if the jurisdictional authority does not know what they're doing, they should certainly turn that leadership over to the FBI. These kinds of mistakes can be avoided.

And I think, finally, one has to look at what kind of training the individuals who were in charge had. Because if they had had any training at all in crimes against children, I think that the validity of that training needs to be questioned.

S. O'BRIEN: And, you know, you mentioned Polly. That's your daughter, of course, who was abducted and killed.

KLAAS: Yes, that's right.

S. O'BRIEN: I was a reporter in San Francisco in '93 and covered that case. I guess you're one of the few people who's really been in Mark Lunsford's shoes and when it turns out that maybe this guy could go free because of the mistakes made apparently by law enforcement, what goes through your -- through a parent's mind?

KLAAS: Well, listen, Mark Lunsford is being very, very gracious. But, you know, what this could result in civil litigation. If his family had any desire at all to take the county or the sheriff to court, I think you would have an extremely strong case. Now, I don't believe for a second that Mark Lunsford would want to take any resources away from public safety that could assist the next missing child, but he's got to be extremely upset at the way this case was handled.

I discount everything that Couey says except for the fact that he murdered this young girl. But if, in fact, she was alive for any period of time at all, after he took her, then perhaps some wonderful opportunities were squandered, simply through inexperience and perhaps even stupidity.

S. O'BRIEN: Gosh, it really is a tragedy compounded again and again and again. Marc Klaas is the founder...

KLAAS: It's horrible.

S. O'BRIEN: Oh, it really is, in a word. The founder of beyondmissing.com and, of course, the Klaas Kids Foundation. Thanks, Marc, nice to see you.

KLAAS: Sure thing, Soledad -- Miles?

M. O'BRIEN: With an estimated 34 million people expected to travel by car this July 4th weekend, mom and dad, get ready to hear, "are we there yet"? To help ease the pain, the American Highway Users Alliance has released a list of top vacation bottlenecks to avoid. Of course, if you're headed this direction, you got to figure out a way to get around it, too. AAA spokesman Justin McNaull joins us now from Washington with more on this. Justin, good to have you with us this morning.

JUSTIN MCNAULL, AAA SPOKESMAN: Hey, good morning.

M. O'BRIEN: Tell me, how did you define these bottlenecks, first of all? Because there are plenty of bottlenecks that we can think of off the top of our head.

MCNAULL: Well, basically, a bottleneck is any place where you have more traffic than the roadway can handle.

M. O'BRIEN: That's a good part of this country, isn't it?

MCNAULL: In a lot of cases it is. And something we tend to think about from a commuting standpoint. But the reality, you'll look at census and other travel data, we takes more trips for social and recreational purposes than for commuting. And when you look at this holiday weekend, there are a lot of families who are going to spend more time sitting in traffic, trying to get to their getaway, than Mom and Dad spend going to and from work each day.

M. O'BRIEN: All right, let's go the map and go through the top ten list. I assume there's more than ten, but let's start in the Northeast. And we're talking about Cape Cod, the Catskill Mountains, Amish Country, I guess, because you're stuck behind the horse and buggies there or something. And then the Jersey shore.

Let's move down to the Mid-Atlantic region and talk about some of the places there. We've got the Maryland/Delaware shore, Tidewater region, North Carolina Outer Banks. As a matter of fact, we have live picture coming to us from Ken Island, Maryland. And that's one of the prime routes to get from D.C. out to Rehoboth Beach and so forth. Traffic moving along there pretty well, despite some fog there today. But we're not doing a traffic report just now.

Let's go West Coast, real quick, because there are a couple of those. This one kind of surprised me. Willamette Valley, Portland. That just doesn't seem like a big traffic place. Napa, I can understand, with all -- especially with the tourists going through there. Tell us about Willamette. What's going on there? Why is that such a difficult place for people?

MCNAULL: Well, in a lot of cases, what we have is, there's just one road or two roads that get you in and out a lot of these very attractive, very popular destinations. Certainly, as there are more and more people moving into sort of the prime earning years and into their baby boomer years, you're getting more second homes, you're people who are starting to retire to some of these destinations. So you're getting more and more traffic coming through, in a lot of cases on the same two-lane roads.

The Oregon coast, for example, those roads are getting shared by people with surfboards on the backs of their cars, R.V.s, logging trucks, people headed to some of the new casinos that are opening up through there, people going to vineyard. Just a whole range of needs. M. O'BRIEN: Oh, yes, and we should also not forget to remind you that Branson, Missouri, also made the list.

MCNAULL: Absolutely.

M. O'BRIEN: Probably some of the same reasons. Of course a lot of the reason that people enjoy these places is the charm of just little two-lane roads, and if you try to solve the problem by building an eight-lane interstate, it might diminish their value as a tourist destination. That's a bit of a conundrum, isn't it?

MCNAULL: It is. Certainly the charm can get lost if you do things like that. So really one of the messages that we're trying to get is there's -- Congress is still waiting. It's been two years since the last transportation funding bill in place. It keeps getting delayed and delayed, and there's some money in there that can actually help make some minor improvements at these bottlenecks, improving intersections, bridges, some things as simple as just extending turn lanes so you don't have to wait behind the logging truck before it makes that left turn on to a road.

M. O'BRIEN: So until all that happens, and who knows if that will do much good, what's the advice for this weekend? If you're going to one of those places, what do you do?

MCNAULL: If you can pick an alternate travel time, even by a couple hours, it could make a real difference. Work real hard so that you don't have to go to work tomorrow. If you can leave at 8:00, 9:00, 10:00 tomorrow morning, you will be fine.

M. O'BRIEN: I think I'll get in trouble if I do that.

MCNAULL: Yes, well, you know, Soledad's done the job for a while. She could do it. Absolutely.

But at the same time.

S. O'BRIEN: Yes.

MCNAULL: At the same time, a lot of us are going to be stuck with it. You're going to have to grin and bear it. So give yourself plenty of travel time so you won't feel harried, you won't do anything irresponsible on the road, so you can take the breaks you need to stay fresh. Bring some toys, some games, some coloring books for the kids, bring sing-alongs, be prepared for it.

M. O'BRIEN: All right, thank you very much, Justin McNaull. We appreciate that.

MCNAULL: You bet.

M. O'BRIEN: You do DVDs with the kids?

S. O'BRIEN: No, I do not, not in the car.

M. O'BRIEN: No? S. O'BRIEN: No, I think that's a mistake. On the plane, yes. Car, no.

M. O'BRIEN: Why not?

S. O'BRIEN: I don't know why.

M. O'BRIEN: What's the difference?

S. O'BRIEN: Because I'd be driving like this and looking at the DVD. That's why.

M. O'BRIEN: That would be bad.

S. O'BRIEN: That would be bad.

(WEATHER REPORT)

M. O'BRIEN: Still to come on AMERICAN MORNING, the cost of security at the airports. Did the feds squander more than $300 million? That is the claim. We're "Minding Your Business" on that one.

S. O'BRIEN: Also ahead this morning, are diet soft drinks actually causing people to gain weight? We have details on a new study when we continue right here on AMERICAN MORNING.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

S. O'BRIEN: Dr. Sanjay Gupta has got the day off today. In this morning's medical segment, a surprising new study on diet soft drinks. Researchers at the University of Texas at San Antonio studied 622 people of normal, their term, weight; 57 percent who drank two or more sodas each day were overweight, seven or eight years later.

Nutrition expert Dr. Stuart Fischer joins us with his take on the study.

Nice to see you. Good morning.

DR. STUART FISCHER, NUTRITION EXPERT: Good morning.

S. O'BRIEN: Let's look a little more closely at this study. Fifty-seven percent who drank two plus a day overweight after seven to eight years.

FISCHER: Yes. In other words they're achieving the exact opposite purpose that you would think. A diet soda is supposed to inherently, I would think, make you thinner instead of gaining weight.

S. O'BRIEN: Right, we would think, wow, it's good news. They all lost weight. They did not. Do you say diet sodas are making you fat?

FISCHER: Well, it's hard to say, because there's two explanations. One is that people are inherently hypocritical when they use an artificial sweetener, and that they will offset this with having something very rich or high caloric, in other words, to make up for it. The other thing is that our brains are doing it. Artificial sweeteners might actually be changing our physiologic response to this artificial product which is not natural sugar, which is a manmade invention and telling our brains you just incurred a 200 or 300- calorie deficit, now make up for it; overeat.

S. O'BRIEN: Isn't there also an option that people who are drinking two diet sodas a day are already people who are struggling with their weight a little, so no surprise that seven or eight years later, they've lost the battle?

FISCHER: True, but we're talking about let's say 100 or 200 calories per day, and someone who is making an error of thousands of calories per day. In other words, it's not the entire picture. There's -- what they're eating is 10 or more times as bad as the sugar, the natural sugar, that I think they should be having in the first place, and secondly, that they're somehow avoiding. This is a -- we're not saying this is a health advocacy for regular soda. Not at all. But could you imagine a blood pressure medicine that increases someone's blood pressure or an osteoporosis medicine that causes osteoporosis? My fascination is this has never been studied before.

S. O'BRIEN: Why aren't people up in arms you mean?

FISCHER: Why aren't they up in arms? There's a reason, I think. I think the last 40 years are the dark ages of dieting. We've just gone along very blissfully ignorant of what it takes to lose weight, and we are fighting a losing battle.

S. O'BRIEN: What do you think is the role of the artificial sweeteners? If we put up a little graphic here, we can show folks how much sweeter an artificial is than regular sugar. Splenda, 600 times sweeter, Saccharin, 300. Aspartame, 180. I mean, obviously much, much sweeter.

FISCHER: Much sweeter.

S. O'BRIEN: Do you think that there is sort of a trigger when you have these artificial sweeteners that increases your appetite?

FISCHER: It certainly seems that way. There have been animal studies, which we wouldn't shouldn't extrapolate from. It's not fair to say humans are laboratory animals, but the animal studies do bear this out. Laboratory animals fed artificial sweeteners will overeat to a great extent. This is not to be put into this human study.

But I think the question is why are we looking at this now, that 60 percent of the United States is obese or overweight? We have a tremendous problem and we accept the fact that artificial sweeteners are part of the mainstream. But are they a health product? Are they helping people to stay a normal weight or be thin? This is a critical issue now.

I will address this in the book I'm writing called "The Park Avenue Diet," which is a much more comprehensive way of looking at weight. But right now on this study, I think people should sit up and listen and think why are not we not looking at this and why is there not more objective evidence of what succeeds and doesn't?

S. O'BRIEN: And maybe off the diet soda for a while.

FISCHER: Lay off the diet soda and stay with Mother Nature, also.

S. O'BRIEN: A lot of water. Dr. Stuart Fischer, nice to see you. Thank you very much.

FISCHER: Thanks so much.

S. O'BRIEN: Miles?

M. O'BRIEN: Stay with Mother Nature. Good advice.

A new audit says the Transportation Security Administration squandered millions of your dollars for airport security. You won't believe what some of the money was reportedly spent on instead. Andy, "Minding Your Business." And I guess he's going to be searched a lot in the future after he does this story. Next on AMERICAN MORNING.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

M. O'BRIEN: British soccer fans still furious that team's owner, new owner, is an American. Check out these demonstrators Wednesday. Malcolm Glazer bought the Manchester United team last month, Man U as they call it. $1.5 billion. Little upset over there. Get them a pint of Guinness or something. When Glazer's three sons paid their first visit to the team's stadium, protesters tried to trap them there. The sons are there in that van. It took a lot of shoving and shouting to get them out unharmed. Boy, they play for keeps there. Of course we've seen that at soccer matches over the years. We know how that goes.

Shocking spending habits by the Transportation Security Administration. More on that huge bank merger, as well. Andy Serwer is with us again, "Minding Your Business" -- Andy.

ANDY SERWER, "FORTUNE" COLUMNIST: Good morning, Miles.

We want to talk about this giant merger in the financial services industry. Bank of America, one of the nation's largest banks, is buying one of the largest credit card companies in the world, MBNA, and the deal worth $35 billion. MBNA is known for its Affinity cards. Those are credit cards that have the logo of a team or a company or an organization. Like right here I've got chains...

M. O'BRIEN: Manchester United? Can you get Manchester United?

SERWER: I don't know about that. You might be able to. You can get a Yankee card here. We've got chains, Yankee card, you can get a Nascar card, a World Wildlife Federation card. Also, I found some obscure ones that are kind of fun here. M. O'BRIEN: Is that your Yankee card, by the way?

SERWER: No, this is Shane's (ph) Yankee card.

M. O'BRIEN: OK, all right.

SERWER: You can't read the numbers. How about the TCU Hornfrog card? Texas Christian University. Star Wars card. We've got that, as well. And...

M. O'BRIEN: You're not making this up, by the way?

SERWER: No, these are real, these are real.

M. O'BRIEN: You can get a Darth Vader card.

SERWER: And also -- this is my favorite. The MBNA barbershop quartet card. See that Norman Rockwell painting there? Isn't that cute? It's pretty cool. I've never gotten one of these.

An exclusive story in "The Washington Post" this morning, raising eyebrows and raising hackles in Washington, D.C. The TSA, the Transportation Security Administration, does not have spending under control. An audit released yesterday the "Post" got their hands on -- Scott Hyam (ph) and others writing this story there -- showing $300 million of spending that is just unaccounted for.

You can see here, one phone call, $526. 20 gallons of coffee. This is my favorite. You want to rent some extension cords? It's going to cost you $1,500. How do you spend that much money on extension cords?

M. O'BRIEN: I would rent them my extension cords for $500. So you're saving right there.

SERWER: Elevator operators. Miles will do that for $4,000. Salary for defunct company -- Miles will do that for $2 million. Round trip -- Miles will drive you to the airport for less than $500. They should have called Miles O'Brien.

M. O'BRIEN: They should have called. Think of the money they would have saved.

SERWER: They could have. The government could have saved a lot of money. So it will be interesting to see what the fall-out is. You know, when you see these things, these $6,000 toilet seats, the, you know, hammer that costs $198. And this just keeps on going. Year after year, decade after decade, in Washington.

M. O'BRIEN: More proof the government is the solution to the problem. Not.

SERWER: No.

M. O'BRIEN: All right. Andy Serwer, thank you, sir.

SERWER: Welcome.

M. O'BRIEN: Soledad.

S. O'BRIEN: Well, this month we here at CNN are celebrating 25 years on the air. And as part of that celebration, CNN's Ali Velshi takes a look back at some of the top business stories that have shaped our lives.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ALI VELSHI, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The top business stories of CNN's first 25 years. We asked the editors at "Money" magazine to come up with a list.

At number 10, the rises of the 401k. Companies shifting the burden of retirement to workers.

Number nine, it changed the way we worked, play and lived. The personal computer.

A dark day for the world is at number 8. September 11, 2001.

ELLEN MCGIRT, SENIOR WRITER, "MONEY" MAGAZINE: I think it would be impossible to overstate the impact that September 11 had on the attitudes and psyches and actions of Americans. Really, people around the world.

VELSHI: Number seven, the rise of the individual investor. Wall Street meets Main Street. Stock trading becomes America's new craze.

At number six, U.S. home prices have boomed recently. But is a bust on the horizon?

Stay tuned as we count down to number one.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

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