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Nancy Grace
Teen Murders Mother With Sledgehammer
Aired September 24, 2012 - 20:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
JEAN CASAREZ, GUEST HOST: We begin tonight with breaking news out of Henderson, (SIC) Tennessee. A mother -- she`s raising two boys all alone after her own husband died of Lou Gehrig`s disease. And you know what? She`s making it. She`s a legal assistant. She has her two boys. Everybody absolutely adores her. She`s a devoted mother.
Well, she is asleep one night in her own bed when a brutal attack occurs in the middle of the night. Melanie Davis is beaten to death with a sledgehammer. And then moments later, her home -- it absolutely goes up in flames!
Her 16-year-old son barely makes it across the street to tell a neighbor, Hey, call 911. Well, cops track down the intruder. They come to the home. And it is not some random person that`s come into the home. Police say that it is a 15-year-old young man. Police say it is her son!
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
911 OPERATOR: Do you need police, fire or medical?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I need both.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: This is the 15-year-old who investigators say bludgeoned his mother to death.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: One of the neighbor`s here come across the street, said his mom`s dead.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Arrested for bludgeoning his mother to death with a sledgehammer while she slept.
911 OPERATOR: Now, is she for sure dead?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Police say he then locked her door and started a fire at their Hendersonville home with his 16-year-old brother still inside.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The 16-year-old son come running across the street crying.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Leaving his brother to burn in the fire that he had started.
911 OPERATOR: Is there a fire, or did they just try to set a fire?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think a fire. It`s up in the game room. I can see the flames.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Zack will be tried for murder, attempted murder and arson as an adult.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CASAREZ: And also tonight, we go to Everett, Washington. A husband - - he goes to sleep. It`s going to be a peaceful night. He and his wife -- they go to sleep together. Well, he wakes up to a chainsaw -- a chainsaw - - and it`s right next to his neck. And it`s roaring. The engine is on. It is a real-life nightmare, a scene straight out of "Friday the 13th." The father of two -- well, he`s able to fight off the attacker and that roaring chainsaw. He survives.
After the police come, they find in the home boxes of trash bags, and they find so much bleach. And then finally they asked him, Well, who was it with that chainsaw? Who was it? After claims of a mystery intruder, the husband finally steps forward with the shocking fact, It was my wife.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Forty-four-year-old mother of two Renee Bishop (ph)...
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Tried to slice off her husband`s head with a sawzall.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He`s a husband and father who`s woken up in the middle of the night from an electric saw!
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: But before the blade touched his neck, the noise woke him up and he fought back.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Renee came at me in the kitchen with the sawzall kind of raised up, and we had a struggle over it, and reached out and pulled the battery out of it.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: After that failed, she allegedly hit him with a hatchet and then a mallet.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Police rush to the scene, where the wife claims that she was saving her husband from an intruder. But police say there`s no sign an intruder was ever in the home.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He didn`t have a shirt on, and he was bleeding from the right arm. He was scared.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Had the sawzall been equipped with a sharper blade, and the blade been closer to the husband`s throat when he was startled awake, he might not have lived.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CASAREZ: Good evening. I`m Jean Casarez of "In Session" on the truTV network, in for Nancy Grace. Thank you so much for joining us.
Before we take you to Tennessee, Nancy has a message that she wants me to give you all tonight. She is asking for your prayers tonight for her son, John David. He is very, very sick. Nancy, we are thinking of you. You`re in our hearts. You`re in our prayers, and your whole family. John David, get well soon, very, very soon.
Now, we`re taking your calls live tonight. And out to Tennessee, the brutal attack of a mother of two asleep in her own bed -- she`s beaten to death with a sledgehammer.
Let`s go straight out to John Phillips. He is a host with 790 KABC talk radio. John, what happened?
JOHN PHILLIPS, 790 KABC: Well, it`s an act of unspeakable brutality, where you have a single mom whose husband died of Lou Gehrig`s disease -- she`s living in this town in Tennessee, trying to make it, working as a legal assistant. She`s got a 16-year-old and a 15-year-old.
She goes to bed one night, both kids in the house. Everyone is presumably safe. And then the unspeakable happens where the 15-year-old just snaps, and in a fit of rage -- and we don`t know the details in terms of what caused this kid to snap -- he breaks into his mother`s bedroom, where she`s lying sound asleep, and plays whac-a-mole with her face and a sledgehammer.
Then he goes into the neighboring room, which is a game room, and takes gasoline and liquor and starts a fire in the house, hoping, I guess, to burn the body, burn the corpse that he left in his mother`s bedroom, that was formerly his mother, and his 16-year-old brother in the bedroom -- hoped he would go down in flames. He then takes off and leaves this mess behind him!
CASAREZ: All right, John, I`m going to stop you right there. I want to go to Alex Quinones, who is the crime reporter for "Gallatin News- Examiner" in Gallatin, Tennessee.
You know, we say, OK, he just snapped. On the other hand, there is a lot of premeditated intent here, a lot of planning, allegedly, went into all of this. Let`s go through -- it was a hatchet? Where was the hatchet? Was it just lying around the home, or did he have to go in the garage and get the hatchet and bring it into the house?
ALEXANDER QUINONES, "GALLATIN NEWS-EXAMINER" (via telephone): You mean a sledgehammer?
CASAREZ: Alexander, do we have you?
QUINONES: Yes. Hello? Can you hear me?
CASAREZ: Yes, the sledgehammer right there. The sledgehammer. Where did he get it?
QUINONES: Yes, he apparently -- it was in the house that he got it. The police aren`t saying a whole lot about the exact details of what led to the attack, but it`s believed that that`s where he got it from.
CASAREZ: All right, then John Phillips, want go back to you. He tried to set the house on fire. Where did he get the components that he used to put the house in a blaze?
PHILLIPS: Well, presumably from inside the house because it was liquor. Liquor was part of what he used to start this fire. He`s not 21 years old. He can`t go out and buy this liquor, so he had to get it from someone who was 21 years old. The specific source of it is unclear, but my guess is it came from inside the house or from a friend`s house or someplace like that. But I know he didn`t purchase the liquor himself.
CASAREZ: All right, what I`m getting to, everybody, is that this is a young man just turned 15 and this is a very, very serious crime because his mother is gone. She`s dead, his own mother. And he allegedly tried to set this house on fire, which would have killed his 16-year-old brother. And the question is why?
With us tonight, a really special guest, everybody. It is Major Don Linzy. He is with the Sumner County sheriff`s department. He actually interviewed young man. And we are using his name. He is a minor, but he is being charged as an adult in the murder of his own mother, Zachary Davis.
Major Linzy, thank you for joining us tonight.
MAJOR DON LINZY, SUMNER COUNTY SHERIFF`S OFFICE (via telephone): Yes. Thank you.
CASAREZ: Can I ask you -- what we`re hearing is that after he allegedly bludgeoned his mother to death in her bedroom as she lay in her bed asleep, he locked the door behind him? Is that true?
LINZY: Yes, that is true.
CASAREZ: All right. Now, where did you locate him? How far away from the home? And how long did it take to find him?
LINZY: We began our search, and during our search, it took us approximately three hours, three-and-a-half hours to locate him. (INAUDIBLE) we started pinging his cell phone. And at that point, we were able to locate him, and one of our deputies located him in a neighborhood approximately four to five miles from where this occurred at, so located him in that manner.
CASAREZ: And how did -- how did he get four to five miles away, do you know?
LINZY: He just walked, started walking. He had packed some stuff and had also stopped by a convenience store and bought a cold drink. And we ended up locating his phone, which he had put in a culvert and -- he`d disposed of that phone at that point. And then we just continued looking and set up a perimeter and located him inside that perimeter.
CASAREZ: So you`re saying that he actually threw the phone away?
LINZY: Yes, he had the presence of mind to know that we could track the phone. He later told me he did not know he had the phone on him and located it in his back pocket, and at that point, he threw the phone in a culvert to keep us from tracking him that way.
CASAREZ: And that can be called consciousness of guilt. Now, what happened when you interviewed him? What was his demeanor like?
LINZY: He was very courteous, very polite, very -- just not very emotional, and answered 99 percent of our questions and just pretty matter of fact about everything.
CASAREZ: Now, you know, we`re hearing reports that he actually smiled a little bit as he answered your questions?
LINZY: Yes, that -- it was a small smile, just a kind of a small grin at one point. In fact, when one of the detectives was trying to get -- make him feel a little bit at ease at that point. And he (INAUDIBLE) a little grin. But as far as smiling a whole lot during the interview, he did not do that.
CASAREZ: Did he seem with it to you? Did he seem that he understood why he was there, understood what you were asking him, able to relate facts back to you?
LINZY: Yes, he`s very knowledgeable. He`s a very intelligent kid, as far as he stated he had just read two Stephen King novels and had read them in a day-and-a-half, and he -- anything you asked him, he pretty much had an answer for and answered it very intelligible.
CASAREZ: Fifteen years old. What was the cause of death, the official cause of death of his mother?
LINZY: (INAUDIBLE) blunt trauma.
CASAREZ: Blunt trauma. All right. We`ve got another special guest, and we`re going to go to him after the break, but Randy Lucas is with us. He is defending Zachary Davis right now.
And Mr. Lucas, thank you for joining us. I understand that you have publicly said -- and we`re going to go more into it, but you consider your client, Zachary Davis, a victim in this case. Why so?
RANDY LUCAS, DEFENSE ATTORNEY FOR ACCUSED TEEN (via telephone): Yes, that`s exactly correct.
CASAREZ: And why is that? Because his mother is dead, he`s alive.
LUCAS: Yes, but Zack has demonstrated that he`s been very disturbed for a long time. As Major Linzy told you, he is very courteous, but he has virtually no emotion. His total affect is robotic. He speaks in a monotone. It`s been that way for several years, and nothing was done to get him any kind of treatment or counseling to deal with the traumas that he suffered both from the death of his father and from sexual abuse.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: According to this affidavit, the teenager murdered his mother with a sledgehammer while she was sleeping.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The neighbor`s here, come across the street, said his mom`s dead in her bed, and it looks like a fire in the game room.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Police say he then locked her door and started a fire at their Hendersonville home with his 16-year-old brother still inside.
911 OPERATOR: Now, is she for sure dead? Or do they think that?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I don`t know. I`m not going in the house until someone gets here. The 16-year-old son come running across the street crying. And the alarm`s going off in the house.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CASAREZ: I`m Jean Casarez, in for Nancy Grace. You know, the neighbors say that this was a wonderful family, a mother 46 years old, her two sons, recently widowed. Her husband died of Lou Gehrig`s disease, raising her two children. She was a legal assistant by day, and just a very normal family.
So she is bludgeoned to death at night with a sledgehammer. The house is set on fire. Her other son runs out. He survives. And now her 15- year-old son has been charged with first-degree murder and attempted murder of his brother.
We are taking your calls live. Let`s go to Gene in Florida. Hi, Gene.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hi. How are you?
CASAREZ: I`m fine. Thank you so much for calling, Gene.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: First of all, my family prayers goes out to Nancy and her son, John. The question that I have is, was there a history of drug abuse or alcohol abuse with the son, or did he seem depressed, you know, a few days before that?
CASAREZ: It`s a good question. Let`s go to Randy Lucas, who`s the defense attorney for Zachary Davis. Mr. Lucas, you allege that there was abuse of this young man, that he was depressed. Give us more details about this because the police are saying that he was very lucid at the time that he was questioned shortly after this happened and seemed to know exactly what was right and what was wrong.
LUCAS: Well, he was lucid. There`s no question about that. Whether he knew what was right and what was wrong is completely different. There is no history of any alcohol or drug abuse, but he has been depressed and in distress for four years now.
CASAREZ: Why?
LUCAS: Because of the death of his father and the sexual abuse that he suffered. He had told the police that he had been -- or he told the police that he had told his mother that he had been sexually abused and that she didn`t believe him and refused to do anything about it.
CASAREZ: So this is a type of retaliation killing, then? You won`t do something...
LUCAS: I can`t answer that. All I can tell you is that anyone who had come in contact with this child in the last four years would know that there`s something wrong.
CASAREZ: Well, he went to school, and nothing was done, family, neighbors, priest or pastor?
LUCAS: That`s exactly right. He went to school and nothing was done. No one who has come in contact with this child could not see that there was a problem. For whatever reason, the mother refused to allow them contact with the extended family. I know the grandparents repeatedly tried to talk to this child, to talk to both of the boys, and the mother would not allow them to have any contact, would not allow them to have their gifts. He had no friends. He was completely isolated.
CASAREZ: So you`re saying the school did nothing at all. Had he ever been a problem at school, any violent tendencies? Was he ever suspended?
LUCAS: No. To the best of my knowledge, no, he had never been a problem in school. But his robotic behavior should have put anyone on notice that there was a problem.
CASAREZ: And school officials did nothing.
LUCAS: To the best of my knowledge, they did nothing.
CASAREZ: Just doesn`t make sense. Let`s go out to the lawyers, Faith Jenkins, former prosecutor joining us tonight out of New York, Alex Sanchez joining us out of New York, defense attorney, and Louis Gainer (ph), defense attorney out of Chicago.
Alex Sanchez, how are you going to mount a mental defense in regard to what happened to his mother and attempted murder in regard to his brother because insanity, you know right from wrong at the time of the commission of your crime. I understand anything that happened to him could be a mitigating factor at sentencing, but how are you going to use it as a defense?
ALEX SANCHEZ, DEFENSE ATTORNEY: No, listen. The events leading to the death of his mother are nothing but pure madness. I don`t think there`s anybody that would dispute that.
Now, his lawyer, I`m certain, is going to assemble some psychiatrists and have him examined to determine if there`s something inherently wrong with him, number one, and to determine whether or not he does have these long-term problems which has impaired his ability to make, you know, proper decisions. So what the lawyer said is basically going to form the defense in this particular case.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CASAREZ: I`m Jean Casarez, in for Nancy Grace. Here`s what we know. Here are the facts. Prosecutors are alleging that a 15-year-old young man -- and he just turned 15 -- found a sledgehammer somewhere in the home, went into his mother`s bedroom, bludgeoned her to death with that sledgehammer, walked out of the bedroom, locked the door behind him, found some ingredients somewhere, one being alcohol -- maybe that was already in the home -- but set the home ablaze and then just walked out and left.
I want to go to Major Don Linzy, who actually interviewed this young man, Zachary Davis, just hours after this all happened. Major, once again, when you sat him down and talked with him, just tell us what he was like. What did he say to you?
LINZY: Well, like Mr. Lucas said, he`s very flat when you talk to him as far as -- he`s just not real talkative, but at the same time, he sat down and at least began talking. He answered our questions, like I said, very intelligently. And there wasn`t nothing basically he did not know about. And you know, he had even written a journal concerning the events before and after, and had written this information after as to how he felt concerning the killing of his mother.
CASAREZ: Randy Lucas, defense attorney for Zachary Davis, prosecutors will say that is premeditation, that notebook right there, premeditation and planning.
LUCAS: Yes, they do say that.
CASAREZ: Your response to that?
LUCAS: Well, I don`t know that it was anything other than a cry for help, quite frankly.
CASAREZ: And he`s being charged as an adult?
LUCAS: Yes, he is being charged as an adult.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Forty-four-year-old mother of two Renee Bishop...
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Tried to slice off her husband`s head with a sawzall.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He`s a husband and father who`s woken up in the middle of the night from an electric saw!
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: But before the blade touched his neck, the noise woke him up and he fought back.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Renee came at me in the kitchen with the sawzall kind of raised up, and we had a struggle over it, and reached down and pulled the battery out of it.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: After that failed, she allegedly hit him with a hatchet and then a mallet.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Police rush to the scene, where the wife claims that she was saving her husband from an intruder. But police say there`s no sign an intruder was ever in the home.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He didn`t have a shirt on, and he was bleeding from the right arm. He was scared.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Had the sawzall been equipped with a sharper blade, and the blade been closer to the husband`s throat when he was startled awake, he might not have lived.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CASAREZ: I`m Jean Casarez, in for Nancy Grace, from -- on "In Session", the truTV Network.
You know, if this wasn`t true, you would think it was a joke that we`re talking about. This is real, and this is true.
I want to go out to Casey McNerthney, reporter for seattlepi.com. All right. Let`s start from the beginning because there`s so many facts here, it`s hard to keep up with them. But we are talking about a reciprocating saw. And this is a couple, a married couple, they`ve been separated, right? But this was his first night he had been invited by his wife back into the marital home. Correct? Take it from there.
CASEY MCNERTHNEY, REPORTER, SEATTLEPI.COM: Right. She invited him back, but said, you know, when you come here, park down the block and there`s also other things that seemed weird, where there was a crinkling on the bed where put plastic underneath it. And then had a lot of (INAUDIBLE) pints of bleach and extra garbage bags around that he found kind of odd. And that is what prosecutors say kind of led up to them to think that she had planned this for some time.
CASAREZ: All right. So he goes to bed that night and take it from the point that he wakes up to the noise of a reciprocating saw.
MCNERTHNEY: The husband wakes up and says that he could feel the vibration of the blade against his neck, and anybody who isn`t familiar with a sawsall, that`s a (INAUDIBLE) tool that sometimes used to cut down old walls or trees or things like that. It`s a lot like a gun with a saw blade on the end.
Luckily for the husband, he only received only a few cuts, minor cuts, and was able to fight back and pull the battery out of that. And she -- you know, for all the planning that this woman did, didn`t really know the sophistication of what she was doing. And so then once the saw failed, then she grabbed a hatchet, hit him in the right shoulder, where he was bleeding, hit her husband in the head with a mallet and he was able to fight her off.
CASAREZ: All right. Let`s go out to Clark Goldband, NANCY GRACE producer.
Clark, I just don`t get this because she`s inviting him back into the marital home, this is their first night of bliss together. What were all the items that were found in the home?
CLARK GOLDBAND, NANCY GRACE PRODUCER, COVERING STORY: Well, Jean, first let`s start with this. We`ve talked about it. This is a sawsall reciprocating saw, and I can assure you, folks, this is very heavy and very loud. So this was the weapon, a weapon just like this that is alleged to be used against the husband. But, Jean, it doesn`t stop there. Law enforcement found barrels and barrels of bleach, they also found eight roasting pans.
Now the husband says this struck him as strange because they only use one roasting pan on Thanksgiving. He also says that he noticed a lot of black trash bags in the home and Jean, he says that`s funny because he had just purchased some trash bags a short time prior to that.
CASAREZ: And C.W. Jensen, retired police captain, joining us from Cave Creek, Arizona. Sheets and sheets of plastic. You know the plastic that you put down when you`re going to paint a room or you`re going to cover your furniture. Well, that was all over the car, the seats and the trunk and it was in the bed, it was between the blankets and the sheets, the plastic.
Let`s just -- CW Jensen, let`s just lay it out there. Allegedly she wanted to cut him up and to put him in those roasting pans and bag him and get him out of there.
CW JENSEN, RETIRED PORTLAND POLICE CAPTAIN: Exactly, she had this thing and I guess it`s a message for all ex-husbands if your wife invites you back and you find plastic all over where -- and garbage bags, maybe you don`t want to spend the night, because this gal had this thing dialed, planned out. But as we find and that I have found with criminals, as great as their plans seem, they never make it to fruition.
CASAREZ: And look at the pictures here. This is Suburbia, this is near Everett, Washington. Just very, very suburban, a community you would want to raise your children in, you`d want to live in. And here`s what I`m thinking, I`m thinking that the problem was she didn`t know how to hold the saw because it was found, and I want to go to our callers, Adnon in Virginia? Adnon is still with us?
Rosalie in Ohio. Rosalie, let me tell you what they found. They found that the saw was held closer to her than him. So I don`t think she knew how to hold it. And when he wakes up, she says to him, there`s an intruder, and I had to get the saw.
Rosalie, your question, your comment?
ROSALIE, CALLER FROM OHIO: Yes, I believe that she this planned from the beginning, and I would like to also know where was her children with this, when all this was going on?
CASAREZ: That`s a good question, Rosalie, because she and her husband had children also.
Casey McNerthney, reporter from Seattlepi.com, were the kids home that night?
MCNERTHNEY: They weren`t, luckily. The couple had been separated prior to this and the kids had been taken by social and health services. So they -- we`re not exactly sure where they were on that night, but they were not in the home.
CASAREZ: So they`ve taken now by Family and Youth Services or they had been taken before this incident occurred?
MCNERTHNEY: They had been taken before the incident occurred in 2011.
CASAREZ: Why?
MCNERTHNEY: Well, there was allegations that the mother of them, the wife in this case, her husband had tried to feed one of the kids anti- freeze. Doctors looked into that, couldn`t find any ways to substantiate that, but still after investigators came in and saw the circumstances in the home, that they took those kids into protective custody.
CASAREZ: Clark Goldband, what else can you tell us about the facts of this case, because they`re getting worse and worse as we keep going.
GOLDBAND: Well, Jean, it starts with the saw, it doesn`t start there, he apparently, according to the husband`s statements, has to wrestle this sawsall away from the wife, grabbing the battery pack and when he does she allegedly starts swinging at him with a mallet. And then he runs and walks himself in the bedroom. But based on the information we found out she screams at the robber or the intruder still in the home. The husband comes out and he gets clobbered again with another mallet, suffering wounds to the head, neck and needs seven stitches on his arm.
CASAREZ: And the big question is why, and we`re going to try to answer that in a minute. But first, Friday night at 8:00 p.m. Eastern, "Cold Blooded Murder". Gambling, jealousy, inside the most baffling and heinous crimes ever committed. Cutting-edge techniques and science combined with crime sleuthing, we uncover what makes the average man or woman cross the line to commit murder. Sometimes the answer is simple, other times the answer is never found.
And Vinnie Politan, he is back with a new show, "Making It In America." Every day at 4:00 p.m. Eastern on HLN, watch the struggles and the triumphs as people follow their own path, each of them trying to find the American dream.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CASAREZ: We are going to have more in 90 seconds, but first let us stop to remember, Air Force Staff Sergeant Bryan Berky, 25 years old, from Melrose, Florida. On a third tour he was awarded the Bronze Star and the Purple Heart. He loves scuba diving, playing guitar. He leaves behind his parents, Bill and Sonya. His brother Jeremy, serving the Air Force. His wide Erin and a son Harrison.
Bryan Berky, he is an American hero.
We will be back in 60 seconds.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Forty-four-year-old mother of two, Renee Bishop McKean is accused of allegedly trying to kill her husband with an electric power saw. The couple reportedly separated for weeks when Keane invites husband Brett Bishop back into the home. That night Bishop wakes up when a power saw is running, pressed on his neck. Police rushed to the scene where the wife claims she was saving her husband from an intruder, but police say there`s no sign an intruder was ever in the home.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CASAREZ: Now besides the fact that there were bottles of bleach, there were eight different roasting pans, there were pieces of plastic all over, and of course black trash bags, the fact is he was injured. His life was spared because he was able to wrestle that saw away from her. But I want to go out to Dr. Marty Makary, who`s a physician and professor of public health at John Hopkins University.
The injuries on this man are going to be critical when they go to trial. Because this is an attempted murder case no question about it. What are you going to look for as you disseminate what injuries came from what deadly weapon? We`ve got a hatchet, a mallet and a reciprocating saw.
DR. MARTY MAKARY, PHYSICIAN, PROF. OF PUBLIC HEALTH, JOHNS HOPKINS: Well, even minor abrasions in the neck area can be extremely dangerous. Because the critical blood vessels in the neck are within a couple of millimeters or less than a quarter inch from the surface of the skin. And any injury to that area could cause someone to instantly bleed to death. There could be nerve injury, can be permanent spine injury. And the other types of injuries are going to be demonstrated to have a vecur (ph) or velocity where it can be traced to somebody intentionally committing that injury.
CASAREZ: You know, I want to go to Faith Jenkins, former prosecutor joining us from New York. You know, the allegation is that she tried to feed anti-freeze to her children? They couldn`t substantiate it? Faith Jenkins, that can be substantiated through toxicology test and that`s a crime. That`s attempted murder right there. Nothing was charged in that.
FAITH JENKINS, FORMER PROSECUTOR: Right. It wasn`t substantiated so nothing was charged and now we`re looking at this completely separate crazy act. If you didn`t tell me that this was planned and all of these things had been put in place, I would think that some type of drugs, alcohol, something happened because I couldn`t believe that someone would actually try to commit this type of crime. I mean her husband is there, he`s sleeping, you know, there are so many other ways when someone is sleeping if you want to kill someone to use the loudest possible weapon you possibly can to literally jar them out of their sleep.
CASAREZ: Defense attorney Louis Gainer, joining us from Chicago. There is so much premeditation here. You tell me, what defense are you going to have? I mean wouldn`t it be better to just plead guilty and try to get a deal?
LOUIS GAINER, DEFENSE ATTORNEY: Not at this point. I think there`s a big problem with his story, and it`s this. He wakes up with this knife, his wife has a sawsall on his throat. She tried to cut off his head. He gets up and says honey, what happened, and she says it`s an intruder. Well, if he knows that it was her with the sawsall then why does he go on to tour the house with her looking for this intruder?
Something smells funny here. And this is the other thing. When he gets into the room, he locks the door behind himself, and she says, oh, honey, here`s your to-do list, come out here, the intruder is still here, and yet he goes out again. That`s when she pulls out the hatchet. And then the mallet. None of that makes any sense. I`ve got a recommendation for this husband. It`s called the front door. Why didn`t he run away? His behavior is not consistent with that of a victim.
CASAREZ: All right. Clark Goldband, NANCY GRACE producer. What are the facts as we know them? Did he go around the house with her as she`s holding the saw, the reciprocating saw?
GOLDBAND: Jean, there was a struggle as we understand the facts, that he was trying to grab the saw from her eventually, and finally does, that`s when see grabs the hatchet and the mallet and continues attacking the victim, but there`s something I want to point out about this intruder theory that we`ve heard about. Law enforcement investigated that and determined that if in fact the intruder came through the 9-year-old girl`s room, through a window, it would be impossible because there was a child`s safety lock on the door and that window could only open a few inches. Also both the front door and the backdoor were locked from the inside, Jean.
CASAREZ: So no sign of forced entry?
Ramani Durvasula, who is with us tonight, a clinical psychologist out of Los Angeles. Make heads or tails of this. Why would somebody do this?
RAMANI DURVASULA, PH.D., CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGIST: You know, let`s start with the fact that we`re dealing with a divorce. And if you ever want to bring out some of the worst in people, that`s a great, great place to start. So you have the divorce, you have a very complicated marital history, all kinds of allegations of child abuse and all these other stuff. So this is sort of a perfect storm. And it`s culminated in obvious a very bizarre event.
But I really think that if we were to look at her history and his history, because both seem odd, and then bring it together in this storm of divorce, I think that she sort of went for it and sometimes people think divorce -- dead is better than divorced.
CASAREZ: You know, I believe they were just separated, they were getting back together again. But the question still remains why? What motivated her to do this?
I want to go to Anita in Ohio who has been patiently waiting.
Anita, good evening.
ANITA, CALLER FROM OHIO: Hello.
CASAREZ: Hi, Anita, I think I hear your television. Thanks for calling.
ANITA: Yes. I just -- I can`t understand what`s going on in this thing. I still think that she had it all planned and she meant to do it.
CASAREZ: All right, let`s go to Casey McNerthney, reporter in Seattlepi.com. This makes no sense to everybody -- anybody. Why would she do this? What did he do that was so bad that would make her lose her mind to have to protect herself against him?
MCNERTHNEY: Well, the hard part is we don`t know that he did anything that bad or any bad at all really. We do know that -- well, they were separated and there`s also been a history where she`s been violent against him for several years. Back in 2001 in California, she has two felony convictions for shooting a gun at her husband in their apartment. So this kind of violent behavior is nothing new in this case.
CASAREZ: So to Alex Sanchez --
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(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Before the blade touched his neck --
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Police rushed to the scene where the wife claims she was saving her husband from an intruder.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The noise woke him up. And he fought back.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He didn`t have a shirt on. And he was bleeding from the right arm. He was scared.
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: But police say there`s no sign an intruder was ever in the home.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CASAREZ: That is just horrible. Alex Sanchez, I want to go to you. I want to go to you when we went to break, all right? What are you going to do with this one? Because here`s your biggest challenge. He`s alive. He didn`t die. So he`s going to walk up to that witness stand, he`s going to take his seat, and he`s going to testify. He could not have done this to himself.
ALEX SANCHEZ, DEFENSE ATTORNEY: I don`t see what the big mystery is here. I mean if all the evidence exists as I`ve heard it regarding the mallet and hatchet and the saw and Clorox, and the bags, I mean there`s only one defense in this case. You`re not going to go with that cockamamie defense that somebody broke in the house and tried to kill the husband and wrestled the saw.
(CROSSTALK)
CASAREZ: You`re talking about insanity, aren`t you?
SANCHEZ: Yes. I am talking about insanity and I think there`s plenty of evidence in the file to exist, that exist right now to establish that she is a person with long-term serious psychiatric disturbances.
CASAREZ: But what about when she tried to feed the kids anti-freeze allegedly.
SANCHEZ: That is more evidence that she`s psychiatrically disturbed. And that`s the type of evidence that you would want to come in in this particular case to prove how disturbed she is.
CASAREZ: But what about the fact that when the -- when the reciprocating saw didn`t work, then she got the hatchet and then she got mallet, one thing after the other.
SANCHEZ: Yes, again. That`s --
CASAREZ: Intentional acts.
SANCHEZ: Again, it`s so insane, it`s so sick and depraved that it`s just further evidence establishing what a sick, depraved individual that she really is. And she`s not in a mental right frame of mind. And that`s going to be the heart of the defense in this case.
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CASAREZ: All right. We`re getting some information now. This woman that you have been seeing. Her name Renee Bishop McKean. She is saying that actually her husband tried to kill the kids with antifreeze. Not her. But as you can see, she`s in a courtroom. And guess what, she was just convicted of one count of attempted first-degree murder and one count of first-degree assault. She is awaiting sentencing.
I want to go to Joyce in Illinois who has been waiting patiently.
Hi, Joyce.
JOYCE, CALLER FROM ILLINOIS: Hi, Jean. I have a comment to make about one of the lawyers saying something before. With a sign of mental disease. And is there anybody in his family, the immediate family or surrounding family tried to have an intervention or do something about this woman?
CASAREZ: You know, it`s a great point. To Casey McNerthney, reporter from Seattlepi.com, to talk about dysfunction, I mean, this appears to be a dysfunctional family that absolutely ended up in tragedy. Anything going on in your area there in Washington that somebody tried to step in?
MCNERTHNEY: You know, we haven`t heard a lot about her family history. We do know that she was pretty harsh to her husband for several years. And we know that there were lots of trouble. But we haven`t heard a lot about other people trying to step in other than folks trying to get those kids out there to keep them safe from her.
CASAREZ: And what about Child and Family Services? They took the children, was there a continuing investigation here? I mean so often the signs are here and just nobody does anything.
MCNERTHNEY: Well, they were -- they were temporarily taken. And the state usually does a good thorough investigation at least in Washington. So I`m sure that regardless of, you know, what happens further with these kids, the state will somehow probably keep an eye on or do what they can.
CASAREZ: Before we go tonight, Barb in Illinois. Hi, Barb.
BARB, CALLER FROM ILLINOIS: Hi. How are you?
CASAREZ: I`m fine. Very quickly. Your thought or question?
BARB: My thought is, why didn`t the husband just come back and slap her once so she would be, you know, out and he can get her under control somehow?
CASAREZ: It would be a valid self-defense claim, that`s for sure, Barb in Illinois.
Thank you so much for joining us to all of our guests and to you. Nancy wants me to give you a message tonight. She wants your prayers tonight for her son John David. He is very sick.
Nancy, we are all thinking of you, your family. John David, get well soon.
"DR. DREW" is up next.
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