Return to Transcripts main page

Nancy Grace

Battle of the Medical Experts in MacNeill Murder Trial; Missing Florida Mother of Three

Aired November 01, 2013 - 20:00   ET

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

SUNNY HOSTIN, GUEST HOST: We begin tonight in Utah and the Martin MacNeill facelift murder trial. It`s the battle over medical experts in court. Three different medical examiners, three different causes of death. What will the jury believe?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Dr. Perper, did you ultimately form an opinion as to Michele MacNeill`s cause of death?

JOSHUA PERPER, FMR. BROWARD COUNTY CHIEF MEDICAL EXAMINER: Yes.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And what was your opinion?

PERPER: My opinion was that Michele died as a result of drowning.

Her chest was compressed in the resuscitation process. She regurgitated large amounts of water, about two liters of water, which is about half a gallon of water. It`s a lot of water.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What about your opinions as it relates to Michele MacNeill`s heart and her death?

PERPER: Very unlikely that her myocarditis was severe enough to present a significant risk of cardiac death. It was felt to be a mild myocarditis.

PERPER: I did not find any evidence of myocarditis.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You have authored a book entitled "When Doctors Kill: Who, Why and How."

PERPER: Yes.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Are doctors unique in their ability to commit homicide?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Objection.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HOSTIN: And tonight, to Palm Beach Gardens, Florida. A middle school nurse and mother of three vanishes without a trace. A major development as we go to air tonight in the search for school nurse Kimberly Lindsey.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A middle school nurse visits her daughter and then texts her to let her know she made it home. But where is they now?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: She is the most nurturing, loving, giving woman that I`ve ever met in my life.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The 49-year-old nurse never showed up for work the next morning. Her car and personal belongings are still at the home.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: None of us ever thought this would happen. Nobody does think it`ll happen. But when it does, it hits you so hard.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Police are searching on land, in the air and diving in water, but still no signs of the loving mother of three.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: But at the end of the day, we`re just three people, we`re just three girls who want our mom back.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HOSTIN: Also tonight, "Caught on Tape." Take a look at this Texas cop after taking two bullets, one of them in her face. Well, tonight, we`ll show you and tell you how she survives and show you the stunning police dashcam video.

Good evening. I`m Sunny Hostin, in for Nancy Grace tonight. Thank you so much for joining us.

We go off the top tonight to Utah and the Martin MacNeill facelift murder trial, a battle in court over three different medical experts concluding three different causes of death. Will this jury believe Michele MacNeill was drowned and drugged by her doctor husband, Martin MacNeill?

Well, let`s talk to someone who has been in the courtroom. I`d like to go to Jim Kirkwood. He`s a talk show host and is right there in Utah. Jim, get us up to speed on what the courtroom was like today.

JIM KIRKWOOD, KTKK: Well, it was a day that I`m afraid the jury may have been -- had their eyes glazed over a bit. A lot of science, a lot of nitpicking, but first the cardiologist indicating that it wasn`t a heart attack, and then Dr. Perper, who I thought did a really good job of outlining the issues -- and of course, the defense hates his guts because he was introducing clear evidence that this is a possible drowning.

So Sunny, this case is moving forward. The prosecution`s laying the foundation for a murder case. I think they`re doing a good job.

HOSTIN: Well, you said that the jury may be sort of napping on this, but this is really crucial, crucial testimony coming in from Dr. Perper.

KIRKWOOD: Yes.

HOSTIN: He reviewed the toxicology report. He reviewed Michele MacNeill`s autopsy report. What was his conclusion as to cause of death, manner of death?

KIRKWOOD: Well, he showed the slides in court today, Sunny. The -- they were really riveting. He -- with his laser pointer, he pointed out that there wasn`t sufficient scarring and sufficient fibers for a myocardial incident, that it was very mild. She clearly did not have a heart attack. What happened was then probably a combination of the drugs and drowning. That was his conclusion, and he based it up with some hard science.

HOSTIN: And he is the only medical examiner at this point that says she died of drowning.

I want to bring in Matt Zarrell, our NANCY GRACE producer. And Matt, if you could just go over with our viewers, what -- how did this doctor, Dr. Perper, reach this conclusion? What supported his conclusion that Michele MacNeill drowned?

MATT ZARRELL, NANCY GRACE PRODUCER: OK, Sunny, there were a number of factors, one of which was the dilution of the chemicals in her bloodstream. Now, Perper looked at blood tests before her death to get a baseline, and then looked at blood tests the day of her death, right after she died. And he noticed that the chemicals were very diluted in her blood. And Perper testified that the only way there could have been that much dilution, nearly 50 percent, could have been from the water she ingested while drowning.

He also cited a number other things, including a half a gallon of fluid expelled during CPR efforts, and the lungs, that the lungs weighed twice as heavy as normal, also a microscopic examination of the lungs, those slides we were talking about, also supported drowning.

HOSTIN: Wow. Well, let`s take a listen to what Dr. Perper concluded in Michele MacNeill`s death.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What is the basis for you to come to the conclusion that Michele MacNeill drowned?

PERPER: Well, in this particular case of Michele, there were certain findings which we don`t (ph) see in many drownings, and are very helpful in determining the determination of drowning, which by no means is usually in these (ph) examination.

Number one, these reports, they are reports of the people who did the resuscitation, that she -- basically, when her chest was compressed in the resuscitation process, she regurgitated large amounts of water, which my understanding is that from the testimony, which I witnessed, which I saw on TV, was about four glass -- four cups of water from one occasion and about three cups of water on the other occasion, which is about two liters of water, close to two liters, (INAUDIBLE) and three quarters, which is about half of gallon of water. That`s a lot of water.

In addition to that, when she was brought to the hospital, they drain the airway and additional water, which was partly bloody and partly foamy, came out. So it was clear that she was inhaling a significant amount of water.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HOSTIN: He says it was clear that she was inhaling significant amount of water.

Now, I`ve got to bring in our own medical expert, our own ME, Dr. Morrone, who is here with me by phone. Doctor Morrone, how is it possible that two other medical examiners that reviewed the autopsy, one that conducted the autopsy, reviewed the toxicology reports, never mention, never come to the conclusion that Michele MacNeill died of drowning? It seems, if you listen to Dr. Perper, it`s very clear that she died of drowning. The evidence was right in front of them.

DR. WILLIAM MORRONE, MEDICAL EXAMINER/TOXICOLOGIST (via telephone): Dr. Perper`s conclusions are based on decades of experience in criminal matters. And if you`re working out of a place that`s like, Park City, Utah, Provo, Salt Lake or a community that`s not used to murders, you just don`t have that feeling.

The key that she may have been drugged enough to not fight back and being held under is something people have not wanted to go to, and he`s not afraid to say that, that`s how she drowned.

HOSTIN: But what is striking to me, Dr. Morrone, is that he says that her lungs were so heavy -- I think they were at 1,300 grams, twice the weight of normal lungs. How could Dr. Fricke (ph), a trained medical expert, miss that clue?

MORRONE: Now, here`s why that seems like he missed it. Some of these people may have said, Well, we`re going to put our money, our basket, for drug overdose. And in a drug overdose, lungs are also extremely heavy, two to three times normal weight. But in a drug overdose, you don`t have all that extra water in there.

So the -- the heavy lungs mean drowning or drug overdose, and in this case, I think the drugs contributed to a load (ph) of (ph) overdose and being held under water. And Perper`s the only guy to put the puzzle together.

HOSTIN: Well, what do you think of the fact that Perper also says that her blood volume was diluted so much by the water that the levels of her drugs in her body were also diluted? What do you make of that?

MORRONE: What I make of that is that says she was held under long enough to absorb water in her lungs and water in her stomach, which means she wasn`t unconscious, she just couldn`t fight back. And the volume of water you take in -- the stomach absorbs water very fast, and it will dilute. Now, that will not happen in a dead person. I`ll happen in somebody who`s alive but subdued. And again, Perper puts the pieces of the puzzle together.

HOSTIN: Well, what about, you know, all of the -- what about the other two experts that say, Well, this had a lot to do with myocarditis, this had a lot to do with the condition of Michele MacNeill`s heart?

MORRONE: You are trained as a medical examiner to also examine past medical history and charts and talk to people about somebody`s health. But Perper is a pathologist who spends a lot more time looking at slides. Again, he has had decades of experience. And the level of damage to the heart is not seen in younger people in their 40s. It`s seen in older people in their 60s and 70s.

And he`s using that, plus the actual data that shows there`s not enough scarring to have been a heart attack. So how do you judge what this is? It`s not natural. It`s homicide.

HOSTIN: How convinced -- you say it`s homicide. How convincing is Dr. Perper`s conclusion that Michele MacNeill died from drowning? Because he doesn`t go so far as to say what you just said. He doesn`t go so far as to say this was homicide. He still concludes that it was undetermined.

MORRONE: He doesn`t want to be remembered in history for taking that extra step. But if you -- if you`re the lawyers in this, you have to be able to extract and focus the spotlight on, Where does it take you? "Undetermined" means that he has the data to show that it`s not natural and it`s not an accident.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HOSTIN: Michele MacNeill found dead in the bathtub, and now her husband, Martin MacNeill, is on trial accused of murder. The big question tonight, what really caused Michele`s death?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Dr. Perper, did you ultimately form an opinion after reviewing all of these materials as to Michele MacNeill`s cause of death?

PERPER: Yes.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And what was your opinion?

PERPER: My opinion was that Michele died as the result of drowning. And in addition to that, she had some drugs on boards (ph) which were not in toxic or lethal levels, but in my opinion, could have contributed to her death.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HOSTIN: So a big day for the prosecution, finally, finally, one witness that says Michele MacNeill was drowned and drugged.

I`d like to bring in a very special guest that I have with me tonight. It`s Jill Harper-Smith. She is the niece of Michele MacNeill. Thank you so much for joining us tonight.

JILL HARPER-SMITH, NICE OF MICHELE MACNEILL: You`re welcome.

HOSTIN: Well, I just have to ask you -- I know that you`ve been in the courtroom every single day. This has been, I`m sure, a very difficult thing for your family. How do you think the trial is going so far?

HARPER-SMITH: I think it`s going good. Today I think was really paramount in having Dr. Perper and Dr. Kragin (ph). You know, their testimonies together I think went really well. I mean, there are days that have been better than others, but I think overall, really good.

HOSTIN: Now, none of the three experts have conclusively said that your aunt was murdered, that this was a homicide. How do you feel about that?

HARPER-SMITH: Well, I mean, I`m not -- I`m not an expert and not a scientist, but I know that people in their right mind can draw inferences and can draw their own conclusions. And you know, we strongly believe that it was a homicide.

HOSTIN: Now, when you say, "we strongly believe," are you talking about Alexis and her sisters and the rest of your family?

HARPER-SMITH: Yes, the family.

HOSTIN: Why do you believe that Martin MacNeill murdered Michele MacNeill? What makes you believe that?

HARPER-SMITH: Well, I mean, there`s lots of things, just knowing Martin, and -- you know, I mean, various different things, but you know, I mean, when you have to keep up, you know, two different lives, you have to -- I mean, it comes to a breaking point when you have to choose. And you know, there was another way to go about it. Unfortunately, he chose -- he chose to kill my aunt Michele.

HOSTIN: How well did you know Martin?

HARPER-SMITH: You know, he really wasn`t very present in a lot of the family activities and things like that. He would just be off in his office doing things. I was closer to my aunt Michele.

HOSTIN: Now, you know, we`ve been watching him at least on television in the courtroom. You`ve been able to watch him in the courtroom. What do you make of his demeanor? He seems just to be so cold in the courtroom. Is he like that?

HARPER-SMITH: That`s how he is. Yes. And you know, I mean, he gets up and shakes his attorneys` hands and pours water, and you know, the whole -- the whole nine yards. But he -- I`ve always felt that he was cold and - - that`s the way he`s always been to me.

HOSTIN: Did your aunt ever say anything about her relationship with Martin?

HARPER-SMITH: No, not to me.

HOSTIN: And you said he`s always been cold to you. What do you mean by that?

HARPER-SMITH: Well, I mean, I know that he treats his, you know, kids and stuff a different way, and other people a different way, but the typical relationship that a niece has with an aunt or uncle didn`t exist with me and Martin.

HOSTIN: Well, you know, how do you think Alexis and her sisters did on the stand? You must have been in the courtroom to support them for that.

HARPER-SMITH: I was. I`ve been in court every day. I`m extremely proud of them. I don`t -- you know, none of us like being in the presence of Martin anyways, and to be able -- to be his daughter and be on the stand looking him in the face, after hearing, you know, and being questioned about how she was found and having to demonstrate that with the bathtub and everything like that, I can`t imagine it.

I would have fallen to pieces, and they held their own. They did not get pushed around. And I think that they did an outstanding job, considering the circumstances.

HOSTIN: And what would be justice for you and your family? What would be justice?

HARPER-SMITH: Well, ultimately, justice for us would be a guilty verdict for Martin. But we`ve been working on this as a family for six years, on working with investigators and everything, and to have it actually be at a trial seems surreal to me.

We`re glad that it`s gotten this far. We`ve done everything that we possibly can. And at this point in time, it`s in the hands of the jury. So to some degree we`ve reached a level of justice in saying, You know what? We`ve gotten it to this point, and whatever happens from here on out is up to the jury. But ultimately, we would, you know, obviously like to see a guilty verdict.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HOSTIN: It`s the battle over medical experts at the Martin MacNeill facelift murder trial.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PERPER: It was clear that she was in pain (ph), and a significant amount of water.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Dr. Perper, if somebody is just watching vomitus come out and -- and coming out like this, fair to say that it`s pretty hard to estimate exactly how much water is...

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HOSTIN: Now, I`d like to bring in again our own medical examiner that I have with me, Dr. William Morrone, because this was a huge day for the prosecution. This was all about the medicine.

But I do wonder, was this a bit confusing for the jury? Because you have so many different experts saying so many different things.

Dr. Morrone, we do have a caller that does have a question that a juror may have. We have Sharon in Ohio. Sharon, please ask your question.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes. I was just thinking that maybe he didn`t really mean for the drugs to kill her but just to make it easier to drown her.

HOSTIN: That is a good question. So Dr. Morrone, how do we know which came first? How do we know she was drowned and then -- and perhaps not drugged? How do we know that she was drugged and then perhaps drowned? What do you make of that? That has to be a question that this jury is going to struggle with.

MORRONE: The types of drugs she was on are common in a post-surgical setting, and they make everybody drowsy and everybody sleepy and everybody obtunded (ph). But you always count on say, I feel a little bit too much, and I don`t want to take more. Or your family says, Hey, you`re a little sleepy.

It`s very logical that he didn`t want to kill her with an overdose, and something was set out there in this cocktail that no single drug could be identified. But Dr. Perper`s point that the combinations were not at a toxic level that could be identified could have resulted from the drowning means that she was at a level that put her out and she couldn`t fight back.

Now, no juror intellectually wants to be told that this is an absolute murder. Dr. Perper allows them to come to that conclusion and have the Ah- ha moment, that it was everything put together. It was the pain meds. It was the sleeping meds. And not being able to fight back in the water means you fill up -- your lungs fill up and your stomach fills up. When you just drown and fall asleep, that doesn`t happen.

HOSTIN: And let`s remember, he is a doctor that would know about the cocktail and the effects of those drugs. Isn`t that right?

MORRONE: Yes. And it`s also part of the history that he was very, very adamant that she be prescribed these drugs in a conversation with the doctor who wrote the prescriptions. That`s out of the ordinary. Usually, as a family member, you don`t get involved, and you let the other doctor make the decision.

HOSTIN: That`s right.

MORRONE: He pushed these decisions.

HOSTIN: That`s right.

Well, when we come back, the desperate search for a middle school nurse and mother of three who goes missing without a trace.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HOSTIN: And now to tonight`s missing case. We go Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, and the search for middle school nurse and mother of three Kimberly Lindsey.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A middle school nurse visits her daughter and then texts her to let her know she made it home. But where is she now? The 49- year-old nurse never showed up for work the next morning. Her car and personal belongings are still at the home. Police are searching on land, in the air and diving in water, but still no signs of the loving mother of three.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HOSTIN: And she does just, too, seem to have just disappeared, vanished in thin air, and we don`t see that very often. And we are certainly very concerned about her.

We want -- I want to bring in Brett Larson, who`s an investigative reporter, to dig a little deeper into the circumstances surrounding this very strange disappearance.

Brett, can you tell us when exactly she disappeared?

BRETT LARSON, INVESTIGATIVE REPORTER (via telephone): Yes. Good evening. And it is almost as though she vanished into thin air. As we said, you know, she texts her daughter Sunday night to say, I made it home. Then Monday morning, her co-worker at middle school where she`s the nurse says she didn`t show up for work, and it`s just not like her to not only not show up but to not call ahead and say, I`m not going to be there, or I`m running late.

So it`s Monday morning when she doesn`t show up for school that people start to get suspicious, and that is when the search begins. The daughters come forward and plead with the public to please, help them find their missing mother.

HOSTIN: Now, Brett, we know then that she texted her daughter at 7:00 PM. So that is the last time anyone heard from her. What did the police do next? When they got to her home -- I hope they went to her home -- what, if anything, did they find?

LARSON: Well, they did actually go to her home. And this is what`s interesting. What they found, all of her personal belongings, even her car, were still in the home. She was the only person missing from the home.

HOSTIN: Well, let me bring in Joel Malkin also, who is a news director at Newsradio 1290 WJNO. And Joel, I find it so strange that her personal items were in her home. What does that mean? What personal items? Do we know?

JOEL MALKIN, WJNO (via telephone): Well, in other words, they didn`t find anything missing. So in other words, nothing apparently was -- had been stolen, at least at first glance. The car was there. So I guess what they`re saying is it doesn`t look like she just ran away and just took off. And it`s just unlike her, according to her friends, not to call and show up, as Brett said, for work the next day, and that`s why the big concern.

HOSTIN: Well, Joel, do we know where authorities have searched for her?

MALKIN: Well, they searched -- to my knowledge, the only place they`ve searched so far is the perimeter around her home and a pond, I believe in front of her home. And now recently, just yesterday, we got word of a body that turned up, a female body, in the town of Clewiston (ph), which is an hour or a little over an hour away from Lindsey`s home.

And Palm Beach County sheriff`s office here has been really checking in with the sheriff`s office in Clewiston to find out if this may be her body . And so far, you know, we`re still waiting for word.

HOSTIN: Well, we`re hoping and praying for this family that it is not this -- this -- this poor mother of three who is missing.

But let me bring in Marc Klaas, who`s the president and founder of the Klaas Kids Foundation. And I have to ask you -- she has been classified as endangered, an endangered missing adult. What does that mean?

MARC KLAAS, KLAAS KIDS FOUNDATION: Well, that means a couple of things. It means that, based on her history, based on what people know about her, and based on the fact that she`s not where she`s supposed to be, that there is reason to believe that her life is endangered.

What we know is that there`s no forced entry. So either the door was unlocked or she allowed somebody into the house, which would indicate that she knew that person. Nothing is missing, which would indicate that theft was not a motive for her disappearance.

Even her cell phone and her purse were in the house, which means that she was probably taken against her will because she would have taken those things with her. So you add all of those things up together, and it`s a pretty miserable scenario.

HOSTIN: Well, Marc Klaas, let me ask you this. And I`m not suggesting at all that her ex-husband is a suspect. We know that he is cooperating with the police. But we also have heard that she went through a very contentious divorce with her ex-husband, who is a doctor, an emergency room doctor in Florida.

And we also know that they were in court just a week before she disappeared. And I know from my experience as a former prosecutor that most women that turn up missing or injured are injured by someone that they know, someone that`s close to them, oftentimes a spouse.

Tell me what you think about this relationship that she had with her ex-husband.

KLAAS: Well, obviously, all fingers are going to be pointed at her ex-husband. And until he is able to clear himself, he`s going to still remain the person of interest. Now, he can do that by having a plausible alibi. They should be able to track his cell phone activity, where his cell phone was at any given time prior to her disappearance.

But then they`re also going to be looking at other individuals. They`re going to be looking at friends, family members, acquaintances, peripheral contacts. They`re going to be looking at registered sex offenders within the community. And then ultimately, it will be a stranger scenario unless she just happens to turn up someplace and say that she just needed to get a little bit of time to herself.

HOSTIN: Which is probably very unlikely, given that she`s the mother of three beautiful, wonderful young girls.

Well, check out -- switching topics -- check out Nancy Grace on the season finale of "Drop Dead Diva" this Sunday at 9:00 PM Eastern on Lifetime. Check Nancy out.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

NANCY GRACE, HOST, "NANCY GRACE": Hi. I`m Nancy Grace. For those of you just joining us, we are talking to a lawyer, Jane Bingum, an attorney with a bone to pick with Ivor (ph) oil. Jane Bingum, what you do know about 8-year-old Rebecca Yorty (ph)?

"JANE BINGUM": Thank you, Nancy. The oil company`s broken promises now threaten the life of this little Amish girl.

GRACE: How so?

"JANE BINGUM": She`s been drinking the tainted water, and now her doctors say she needs a life-saving surgery.

GRACE: And let me guess. Ivor Oil won`t pay for that?

"JANE BINGUM": You got it.

GRACE: Shame on you, Ivor Oil. Shame on you! Jane, may I speak with Mr. Yorty?

"JANE BINGUM": Actually, Nancy, the Amish believe that broadcasting their imagine demonstrates a lack of humility. That`s why there`s no Amish celebrities.

GRACE: I see.

"JANE BINGUM": But your viewers can help Mr. Yorty by pressuring the oil company into doing the right thing. We are calling for a national boycott of Ivor Oil until they take responsibility for their actions, clean up the water and pay for little Rebecca`s medical bills.

GRACE: You heard her, everybody. We are taking those Ivor Oil SOBs down!

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HOSTIN: I`m Sunny Hostin, in for Nancy Grace tonight. We go to tonight`s missing, middle school nurse and mother of three Kimberly Lindsey vanishes in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida. As we go to air, human remains discovered in a sugar cane field. Is it missing school nurse Kimberly Lindsey?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Kimberly Lindsey has been missing now...

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Her daughters stepped forward and made an impassioned plea -- memorize her face, look for her, help them find her.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Lindsey is a nurse at Bach (ph) Middle School of the Arts.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: She didn`t show up for work. When investigators checked her Palm Beach Gardens home, they found her belongings. They found her car. They did not find Kim Lindsey.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HOSTIN: Let`s bring in the lawyers now because this really is just an interesting case, when you`re talking about no case yet really -- no suspect yet really, but a missing woman.

I have with me Darryl Cohen, a defense attorney, and of course, Genay Ann Leitman, also a defense attorney.

Let me ask you first, Genay. When someone goes missing, who do investigators first look at?

GENAY ANN LEITMAN, DEFENSE ATTORNEY: Unfortunately, they always look at the spouse, or the former spouse or the boyfriend, or if it`s a guy who`s missing, the girlfriend. It`s just a normal reaction.

But that doesn`t mean that that person is involved. We don`t know, unfortunately, what happened to this lady. I hope that they find out what happened to her very shortly. But just because somebody is questioned and is a target doesn`t mean that they did it or even know who did it.

And hopefully, this is not the body in Clewiston. You know, I practice law in New York but also in Boynton Beach, Florida, which is Palm Beach County, and Clewiston is roughly about a 45-minute drive. It`s in between the east coast of Florida and the west coast of Florida.

It`s a very rural area. There`s a lot of migrant workers out there on farms and sugar cane plantations. If she got there, someone took her by force, obviously, because it seems that the house wasn`t disturbed. I`d be curious to know whether or not the house was locked when the police got there, or if it was opened. This could have been someone who just broke into her house, or it could be someone she knew.

HOSTIN: Well, Darryl Cohen, let me ask you the same question. I mean, who do the police look at when someone seems to just vanish into thin air? And I don`t want to suggest that her ex-husband is a target or a suspect. We know that he has been cooperating with the police. The police have spoken to him. But where do investigators go from here?

DARRYL COHEN, DEFENSE ATTORNEY: Well, Sunny, the first thing they do you is they look at everything and they look at everyone. Let`s take the husband. Take him off the table. The fact that he was in a contentious divorce, the fact that they had a hearing last week makes him less of a suspect than anyone else would be. Why? Because he`s under a microscope.

Did anyone consider the fact that perhaps she was followed, that perhaps the doorbell rang? Perhaps she walked outside? They look everywhere.

So what do we look at? As an ex-prosecutor, as a defense lawyer -- and I was in the state attorney`s office in Dade County years ago and in the DA`s office in Atlanta. But what are we talking about? We`re talking about a missing woman. What could have happened to her? Maybe she had amnesia. Maybe a friend picked her up. We just don`t know.

But what we do know is where she isn`t, and we do know that she didn`t go to school. She didn`t do her job as a nurse that day. That makes people frightened, as well it should.

But we`re only four days into this. It`s not as if she`s been gone for weeks and months at a time. So what do we look at? We look at everything we possibly can. And yes, her ex-husband has to be looked at. But so what? So does everyone else that she was around.

HOSTIN: That`s right. That`s right. And you know, I worry, I think, like most people, the most about her girls, who have been pleading, pleading with the public for help.

And I want to bring in a psychotherapist now to talk about that. I have Eris Huemer with me. I just wonder, what do you do if you are advising the girls at this point? Because a body has been found. We`re not suggesting, of course, that this is the missing mom. But what is going on with the girls at this point?

ERIS HUEMER, PSYCHOTHERAPIST: My heart just goes out to these girls. They are absolutely consumed right now with their mother`s whereabouts. They are experiencing a lot of grief and stress, and they will continue to be having this sort of panic until they find out any answers.

But what I suggest is that they surround themselves by people who really empathize with them, can validate them, listen to them, really care about what they`re going through because they really need some ears and a shoulder to cry on and just some empathy right now.

HOSTIN: And we`re talking about a mom at this point. What kind of person would just sort of run off and not notify her girls or her friends? Does that theory make sense?

HUEMER: It doesn`t really make sense to me so much in this case because you really -- when you listen to her daughters speak, the one daughter, she says, This just isn`t like my mom. And her friends say that as well.

But if the mother were to just be missing because of a stressful situation -- I mean, divorce is one of the most stressful circumstances that anybody could possibly go through because your entire life changes. So that could be something that will be brought up during this investigation.

But you know, this -- a person who just disappears has something to hide or is overly stressed and needs to get away. But to me, that just doesn`t sound like this in this case.

HOSTIN: Thank you so much for joining me, Dr. Eris. And turning now to tonight`s "CNN Heroes."

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HOSTIN: I`m Sunny Hostin, in for Nancy Grace. And we`re talking about tonight`s missing, it`s the search for Florida middle school nurse Kimberly Lindsey.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A middle school nurse and mother of three travels to visit her daughter. Upon returning, she texts family to say she arrived back home. The next day, she doesn`t show up at work. Police go to the home, find her car and personal belongings, but the 49-year-old school nurse are missing.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HOSTIN: Now, we have had a break in the case, a possible break in the case today. A body has been found in a sugar cane field, a female body, approximately an hour away from where Ms. Lindsey went missing.

Now, I want to bring in Dr. William Morrone again, our own medical examiner. And we understand, Dr. Morrone, that the body was found on Thursday. It`s only a day later, but they are not identifying the body yet. What are the first steps that are done to identify a body?

MORRONE: Well, the first thing you want to do with a body that`s exposed is to try to arrest or stop the maggot infestation that debulks all the mass off the body, get the body out of exposure and get it where you can measure it for age, gender, sex, and weight matched controls, and then compare it to your missing people.

And it would be a pseudo-autopsy, which would include X-rays of the bones, which will give you a good idea of how old this person is and who it is.

But out there, that body begins decomposing as soon as it dies. If it was killed someplace else, that body is decomposing on the way out to the field. So it`s probably in its second or third stage of decay, where it turns to liquid and the maggots debulk it. So it`s going to be difficult to identify.

HOSTIN: Well, that was my next question, because if she went missing on October 27th, we`re not talking that many days. So you know, the body was in the sugar cane field for several days. Is that the amount of time that it would take for the body to have difficulty being identified?

MORRONE: In Florida, at ambient humidity between 70 and 85 degrees, that body can be bones in four days. In a colder climate in a northern state, it may take three weeks. But in Florida, the maggots and the blowflies and infestation can take that body down to bones in four days.

HOSTIN: Well, thank you, Dr. Morrone, for that information.

Coming up next, "Caught on Tape." A Texas police officer shot in the line of duty survives a bullet to the chest and to her face. We`ll show you the police dashcam video.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HOSTIN: Let`s go to tonight`s "Caught on Tape." Take a look at this Texas cop who survives after taking two bullets, one of them to her face. Her name is Ann Caresalas (ph). She`s a mother of two, a former Marine and an officer with the Stafford (ph) Police Department.

Caresalas was working the night shift when she pulls over a suspicious Nissan Altima with three men inside. She thought they needed help. Well, that`s when the front seat passenger pulls a gun and begins to shoot at her, striking Caresalas in the left cheek and the chest. Luckily, she was wearing a bulletproof vest.

Well, the officer pulls her gun, opens fire as the men speed away, calls for backup, and then bravely jumps back into her police cruiser and chases the suspects for four miles, all of it caught on police dashcam.

And just hours ago, police have made their second arrest in connection with the shooting. The suspected shooter, 21-year-old Sergio Francisco Rodriguez (ph), and the alleged driver, 28-year-old Freddy Enriques (ph).

And now we stop to remember American hero, Army specialist Joseph Bauer (ph), 27 years old from Cincinnati, Ohio. He was awarded the Purple Heart and National Defense Service Medal. He loved the Bengals, the Reds, and cheesecake. He leaves behind his parents, Roger (ph) and Lynn (ph), seven brothers, seven sisters, and his widow, Misty (ph). Joseph Bauer, a true American hero.

Thank you for joining us. Have a great night.

END