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American Morning

Florida Judge Sentences Carlie Brucia's Killer to Death; Crash Mystery

Aired March 16, 2006 - 09:32   ET

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

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Carlie Brucia would have turned 14 years old today. Unfortunately she didn't leave to see that birthday. A Florida judge sentenced her killer, Joseph smith, to death yesterday, and it was quite a dramatic scene.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JUDGE ANDREW OWENS, SARASOTA CO. CIRCUIT COURT: Joseph Smith, based upon your actions, you have forfeited your right to live freely among us in society, and pursuant to the laws of Florida have forfeited your right to live. Accordingly it is hereby ordered and adjudged that for the murder of Carlie Jane Brucia, you are hereby sentenced to death.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

M. O'BRIEN: We are joined now by Marc Klaas. Marc Klaas, his daughter, Polly, as I'm sure you know, was abducted and killed more than a decade ago now, and he has since dedicated his life to stopping these kind of crimes, the Klaas Kids Foundation and beyondmissiong.com. He joins us now from San Francisco.

Mark, good to have you back with us. What's it like seeing yet another trial, yet another sentencing, yet another death sentence meted out.

MARC KLAAS, KLAAS KIDS FOUNDATION: Well, at least justice has been adjudicated in this particular case. It's very distressing because, you know, Miles, there's legislation all over this country that is designed to deal with these people. And whether it's in California, or whether it's in Washington, D.C., the politicians don't seem to be able to put away partisan differences, and continue to allow the egos to get into the way of good policy. And it's unfortunate because, as long as that occurs, we're going to see these flatline psychopaths, like Joe Smith, get sentenced again and again and again.

M. O'BRIEN: Well, explain to me how partisan politics are is getting in the way of law enforcement here.

KLAAS: Well, that's a very good question, but what happens in Washington, for instance, there's a wonderful piece of legislation on -- there's a wonderful piece of legislation making its way through the Senate, that politicians will attach their own personal agendas on to. for instance, a great piece of legislation that in the last Congress or in the last term had hate crimes against gays attached to it, which certain senators found objectionable. This time, it's different issues, but the same thing occurs all over the country. It's occurring in California right now. It's occurring in Washington D.C. And as a result, we're unable to get this very powerful legislation that we need that will do numerous things, things all the way from sentencing to enforcing the registration laws, to giving law enforcement better tools, to giving the public better tools.

M. O'BRIEN: It's got to be so frustrating for you, Marc, to think that you're basically getting a deaf ear when, you know, young kids are victims here.

KLAAS: You don't get a deaf here. Everybody glad hands you, but at the end of the day, they do put their partisan vests back on, and they make sure that it's about them and it's not about the kids. It's very distressing.

I was in Sacramento with Erin Runyon, the mother of Samantha Runyon yesterday. And we went through the whole thing all day long. Wonderful ideas out there, opportunities to do things never done before, yet the partisans get in the way, and as a result nothing seems to happen.

M. O'BRIEN: What's at the top of your agenda, though? What do you think needs to be changed the most to try to stem all of this?

KLAAS: Well, I think the very first thing we need to do, is we have to have mandatory minimums on people that are going to rape children. We have to put the guys behind bars from 25 years to life. We have to make sure that when they get back on the street, that they're forced to register, and that if they don't, they go directly back to prison. We have to make sure that law enforcement has better tools, included things like safe teams, and limited GPS tracking devices, to be able to monitor these individuals, and then finally we need civil commitment laws that allow us to keep the monsters behind bars after they've turned off the sentences if they are still a threat to society. Then we need more cooperation between the states and a national sex offender registry that details who these guys are and what they have done. And once we get to that point, we can really start making some changes.

M. O'BRIEN: A final thought here. No emotion shown by Smith in court yesterday as the sentencing came out. And yet a month ago, when he was pleading for his life, weeping and -- you know, you have to wonder if it was an act?

KLAAS: Well, he's an emotional flatliner. And I mean, that's what we saw. We've seen into the window of this guy's soul. We saw it when he took little Carlie on that videotape, no emotion there. We saw it when he was whimpering and pleading for his own life, which is when they should have put the bullet in his head as far as I'm concerned. And then we saw the flatlining again yesterday, when the judge, in very specific detail, said exactly what's going to happen to him, and he didn't even blink.

M. O'BRIEN: Marc Klaas, thank you for your time. And we wish you well as you continue your crusades. KLAAS: Thank you. Thank you, Miles -- Soledad.

S. O'BRIEN: Well, what started with a car crash has actually turned into a bizarre international mystery. The car involved was no ordinary car. The guy in the car apparently not any old ordinary guy.

Dan Simon has our story this morning.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DAN SIMON, CNN CORRESPONDENT, (voice over): At first glance, anyone could have mistaken this Malibu scene for a Hollywood stunt. A Ferrari sliced in half sitting in the middle of the highway. Helicopters hovering overhead. Cameras rolling but they weren't shooting some high-budget feature, they were filming the action for the local news.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And that's the engine of this car.

SIMON: Hans Laetz, an L.A. freelance journalist, was at the crash scene in minutes.

HANS LAETZ, FREELANCE JOURNALIST: When you hear a nasty crash on the highway, it's in one little place. This stretched over almost half a mile of highway.

SIMON: Amazingly, no one was seriously injured in the early morning crash on February 21st. But car enthusiasts were mourning the loss of the incredibly rare Ferrari Enzo, one of only 400 ever produced. Authorities believe the million-dollar vehicle was going more than 160 miles an hour before it hit an embankment and crashed into a power pole.

Car accidents here in Malibu, or anywhere else for that matter, certainly aren't uncommon. But what makes this one so unusual isn't just the pricey car, but the man at the center of it all, a Swedish national named Stefan Ericsson.

This is Ericsson who made a fortune in high-tech. He told deputies at the crash scene he was just a passenger in his own Ferrari, which he said was being driven by a German acquaintance he knew only as Detrick (ph). And this mysterious Detrick, he said, ran for the hills, literally, and disappeared.

SGT. PHIL BROOKS, L.A. COUNTY SHERIFF'S DEPARTMENT: It instantly put the deputies in a search and rescue mode.

SIMON: But there was no Detrick to be found and no trail of him either says Sergeant Phil Brooks. It would be the first of several puzzling statements made by Ericsson. Listen to what he said to Hans Laetz when the reporter tried to take his picture.

LAETZ: He said, don't take my picture, I'm with Homeland Security. Those were his exact words.

SIMON: Just who is this international man of mystery, Stefan Ericsson? Well according to investigators, in the early '90s, he served five years in a Swedish prison for counterfeiting. He later became a top executive for a European electronics gaming company called Gizmondo, a company that collapsed after losing more than $100 million.

BROOKS: It's like a James Bond story. It's just the background is just amazing.

SIMON: Authorities theorized Ericsson concocted a bogus story because he was drunk. His blood alcohol level was just above the legal limit. Sergeant Brooks says a DUI would have been a lot easier than the trouble Ericsson faces for allegedly lying to deputies. Not to mention the international media exposure.

BROOKS: Well, I've had calls from all from Sweden, the UK, and even Australia.

SIMON: And what about Ericsson's claim of having ties to Homeland Security?

Does Stefan Ericsson have any connections to Homeland Security?

BROOKS: As far as I know, no, none at all.

SIMON: Ericsson's attorneys declined to speak with CNN and he's yet to be charged with any crime. The sheriff's department tells us he's left the country. In any case, the Sweed probably wishes he got in a different car that day, a car that wouldn't have attracted so much attention.

Dan Simon, CNN, Los Angeles.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(WEATHER REPORT)

M. O'BRIEN: All right. Questions for me. That's on the agenda.

S. O'BRIEN: I have so many.

M. O'BRIEN: You are disqualified. You are so disqualified.

S. O'BRIEN: And you and Soledad married? Are you brother and sister?

M. O'BRIEN: As I say, yes, we're married, not to each other.

E-mail time, 10:30 on Pipeline. We invite you to tune into CNN.com/pipeline, live from my office on the Miles cam. And going to take some of your e-mails. Am@CNN.com is the e-mail address. Questions, whatever's on your mind, about the show, about me, about Andy Serwer, about Chad, Carol, Soledad, I will speak on behalf of all of them.

S. O'BRIEN: Gee, thanks, Miles. Andy and I really appreciate that. Our lawyers will be calling you later. M. O'BRIEN: Still to come, Andy will be "Minding Your Business," because I'm minding his, after all, with news of job cuts and health care hikes at a major U.S. company.

S. O'BRIEN: And we're going to talk to the guy who helped create "American Idol" Simon Cowell, who is now looking for the next great inventor. We'll ask him about this latest project, reality TV. That's ahead on AMERICAN MORNING.

We're back in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(MARKET REPORT)

S. O'BRIEN: Ahead this morning, I'm going to talk to Simon Cowell. He's got another reality TV show on his hands. Is it going to be a hit as well? That's just ahead on AMERICAN MORNING.

Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

S. O'BRIEN: After helping create one of the most popular shows on television, "American Idol" icon Simon Cowell hopes American ingenuity will be the next new thing.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Let us see if the woman who is going to the beach.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I don't understand.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This would ward off mountain lions, bears.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Is your invention a stick?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's a wand, actually. It's not a stick.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The one man, one scoop, sandbag shovel.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: One, two, three. One shot.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

S. O'BRIEN: The show airs tonight on ABC. Simon Cowell joins us this morning. Simon, nice to see. Thanks for talking with us.

SIMON COWELL, "AMERICAN INVENTOR": How are you?

S. O'BRIEN: I'm very well, thank you. You saw in the montage all the highlights and the low lights of some of the inventors. Is it kind of a same idea? You do a try-out for your invention? How does that work? COWELL: I like -- yes, it's exactly the same principle we do on "Idol." We held open auditions and just like "Idol," we always attract a certain kind of contestant.

S. O'BRIEN: Some good, some really bad.

COWELL: Mainly bad.

S. O'BRIEN: Wow, that's a nice -- that was a nice way to put it. A certain type of contestant. I'm shocked, actually.

COWELL: Why do they come on my shows?

S. O'BRIEN: You know, it's because they want it. They want to be abused and picked on. Tell me a little bit about...

COWELL: Is that what it is?

S. O'BRIEN: I think so. Is this essentially "American Idol" for inventors? I mean, is that -- in a nutshell -- or is that too simplistic?

COWELL: That's probably a good way of putting it, yes.

S. O'BRIEN: Pretty much.

COWELL: Yes.

S. O'BRIEN: What do they win? I mean, obviously you don't get a recording contract at the end?

COWELL: They win a million dollars.

S. O'BRIEN: If you're the big winner.

COWELL: If you're the big winner. And you get the product manufactured, and then it's sold through Amazon.

S. O'BRIEN: Oh, so it's a real -- they actually see their idea come to life. Now if -- there's going to be, I guess, for the sort of the semifinalists, you get $50,000 to kind of move you to the next level, right?

COWELL: Yes. I mean, that's exactly what happens. The point on this show is, is that like "Idol," we really wanted to attract not the professional inventor who knows the whole process. It was the typical kind of mom or dad or in some cases boy or girl who have just come up with an idea, some of them that they've taken to a level as far as they could go financially. So they desperately needed a show like this to know what to do with the product. So it's not a show about professional inventors.

S. O'BRIEN: Right, which would be a big old yawn. What you want are people who are good TV. A show about professionals would be kind of boring. They know what to do, they file the patents, they make the... COWELL: Exactly.

S. O'BRIEN: You know, you want people who are kind of struggling a little. There is a lawsuit, as you well, that's been filed in federal court. Names you in the lawsuit as basically -- and other people, too, stealing the idea. What do you say to that?

COWELL: You can't steal something you've never heard of. Unfortunately, this happens a lot now, which is particularly in reality TV, you come up with an idea and somebody says I was there before you. You must have stolen it from me. But we'd -- honest to God, we've never heard of these people. But they're getting a lot of publicity.

S. O'BRIEN: Yes, they sure are. Let me ask you a final question about "American Idol." You know, the bloggers, which I'm sure you never pay attention to -- or maybe you do -- have said that this season, you are meaner and that Paula is loopier than ever.

COWELL: That's probably a good summary, isn't it? I don't know whether I am or not, to be honest with you. You know, I was thinking before we started the show -- I looked at the statistics. You know, we've had about 500,000 people turn up over five seasons. And to date, we've launched one and a half careers. When you look at those statistics, which I think are appalling -- and that's when you're good.

So, you know, I just took the view this time, what is the point of even messing around with most of these people? They're not going to make a career or any type of decent career out of singing. So I'm going to point them in the right direction. So I thought I was being kinder.

S. O'BRIEN: Oh, I see. More brutal. The kinder, gentler Simon.

COWELL: Yes.

S. O'BRIEN: I get it. Simon Cowell, nice to check in with you. Thanks for talking with us about your new show.

COWELL: Nice to talk to you.

S. O'BRIEN: "American Inventor." "American Inventor" premieres, tonight, two-hour special, 8:00 p.m. Eastern time. We're back in just a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

S. O'BRIEN: We're out of time.

M. O'BRIEN: Shocked, it just went by.

S. O'BRIEN: Like four hours, kind of, that went by.

M. O'BRIEN: Daryn Kagan, take it away from CNN Center, please.

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