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Nancy Grace
Nancy Grace Mysteries: What Happened to Hasanni Campbell?
Aired May 23, 2014 - 20:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
ANNOUNCER: Oakland California, broad daylight. A 5-year-old vanishes from the back seat of a car just outside a shoe store at a busy suburban shopping center. How could he just disappear and nobody sees a thing? The last person to see little Hasanni Campbell is his foster dad, who speaks out in an exclusive interview after taking a polygraph. Homicide investigators join K9 tracker dogs, rescue teams and police, spreading out grid-style across the city of Oakland. Where is 5-year-old Hasanni?
NANCY GRACE, HOST: I remember when I first heard about little Hasanni Campbell. It broke my heart. Hasanni is a 5-year-old little boy. He only weighs about 40 pounds. He`s only three feet tall, and he wears a brace on his leg. He`s got cerebral palsy. Those are the first things I learned about Hasanni, that and he`s missing.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The child`s foster father has told police the 5- year-old went missing behind a shoe store in Rockridge. Louis Ross and his fiancee, Jennifer Campbell, the boy`s aunt, have cooperated with investigators. Hasanni has cerebral palsy and wears leg braces. FBI agents joined to (ph) the case and have helped search the family`s home in Fremont. Police have canvassed the Rockridge area and other surrounding cities. Volunteers searched two parks in Fremont and Hayward. (ph)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There`s no signs of this boy. And want to try to locate him. And the more days that pass, the less likely we`re going to find him alive.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Both foster parents say they are not giving up in the search for Hasanni.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: If you want to help, keep our son in the news. Don`t let him become a picture on a milk carton box five years later that you never find. You want to help? That`s what you do.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GRACE: It was a hot summer afternoon, on Monday, August the 10th, around 4:00, 4:15 in the afternoon. Hasanni was with his adoptive father. Neither the father, Louis Ross, nor the mother, Jennifer Campbell, were any blood relation. They were not the mother or father of Hasanni. Through a series of family contortions, they had agreed to take care of little Hasanni.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That August morning, Jennifer Campbell wakes up and prepares for her shift at the shoe store. Before her 7:00 AM departure, she walks into the bedroom and gives her nephew, Hasanni, who is also her foster child, a good-bye kiss.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: She loved that little boy. She was very happy and very proud to have him.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Today, Louis Ross, Jennifer`s fiance and Hasanni`s foster father, is supposed to drop off Hasanni and his little sister at the store.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: They would stay with Jennifer until she got off work. He would go to school, and she would take the children home.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: But on this day, something has gone horribly wrong, and it`s not clear why.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GRACE: This is how the story goes. The father, Louis Ross, says that he took Hasanni to Rockford shoe store, where his wife, Jennifer Campbell, worked, that he pulled in behind the store. He went to the door, the back door, of the shoe store, like at a strip mall, and couldn`t get in.
So he takes his 19-month-old daughter with him, leaves Hasanni in the car. It was a black BMW. He, Louis Ross, and the 19-month-old baby go around the mall and come back to the front of the shoe store, see Jennifer. They go to the back to open the door to get Hasanni out of the car, and Hasanni is gone. That`s the story.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Where is he?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I don`t know. He was just here! Hasanni?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: In disbelief, Jennifer continues to ask Louis, Where is Hasanni? Where is Hasanni? Within minutes, Oakland PD responded to a 911 call of a missing child.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Phone call from Louis Ross, the 5-year-old son, Hasanni Campbell, is missing. At that point, it was just a total blitz. Our missing persons unit (INAUDIBLE) Family Services Division responded. They had tracking dogs out there. They had helicopters up, search parties, canvases door to door.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I just drove in, like, I went in...
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Louis tells investigators that he left Hasanni at the back door of the shoe store and told the boy to wait there for him. Louis says that when he walks through the rear door of the store to find the child, Hasanni is no longer there.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GRACE: This is a pretty nice area in Oakland, a lot of upscale shops and boutiques, a lower crime rate where this happened than in other parts of Oakland. Let me just say that this was not a high-crime rate area at all where Hasanni disappeared.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: All morning and afternoon, it`s been quite on College Street, the area where 5-year-old Hasanni Campbell was last seen. Compare that to this picture Tuesday, when officers knocked on doors, checked alleyways and even looked on roofs for any sign of the boy. Carla James (ph) works next door to the store where Hasanni disappeared. She worries the focus of police has moved elsewhere.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I just hope the police aren`t getting distracted by some tangent or theory they may have come up with, and you know, aren`t really looking to -- you know, maybe the kid is in the neighborhood.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I just got back from a run. And you know, I`m looking in bushes, and you know, peeking in back yards and definitely looking for him.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Many businesses nearby have been visited by investigators. You can see officers here on Tuesday going into this copy store. A worker there said police came by twice.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Because anybody who lives in the area, basically, got a visit. And they were asking, you know, Have you seen this person? You see anybody unusual? And they`re just trying to get eyewitnesses to anything that might give a hint.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: At the shoe store where the little boy went missing, they have posters up. Many people stop by, asking questions. They just hope the interest doesn`t die down.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I mean, I don`t want this to be just forgotten. I mean, we have a 5-year-old little boy out there that`s missing, and he`s got to be found.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GRACE: Now, according to the dad, Louis Ross, this was not the first time they had done this. In fact, Ross says that he was attending a night class, so very often, when it was time for class, he would bring Hasanni and the 19-month-old girl to stay in the back room of the shoe store while the mom, of sorts, Jennifer, worked. The two then would play in the back room while Dad goes to a night class.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: So tragic because he was different than most little children in this country. He had cerebral palsy, and he had braces on his ankles that went into his shoes so he could walk. And on this day in August, the caregiver, who was the boyfriend -- and I`m talking about Louis Ross -- took him to the back of a shoe store because that`s where the foster mother, Jennifer Campbell, worked.
He opens up the car, and he said that he saw little a Hasanni taking his seatbelt off. And then he walked around to the front carrying the 1- year-old. And the whole point was to open up the back door for Hasanni. But when they opened that back door, he was gone, just evaporated into thin air. And that was the last that anyone ever saw him.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GRACE: Now, the 911 call was made relatively quickly, around 4:15, reporting Hasanni missing. Here`s the problem. Outside Louis Ross, the acting dad, and Jennifer Campbell, who was Hasanni`s aunt, nobody had seen Hasanni for four days. So how do we know that he was ever really even in that car?
Again, it was a complicated family situation. The acting mom, Jennifer Campbell, is actually Hasanni`s aunt, and Louis Ross her fiance at the time. And that is how he happened to be taking care of Hasanni and the baby girl.
Again, we`ve checked and checked. We don`t have any record of anyone outside Campbell, the aunt, and Louis Ross, the fiance, having seen Hasanni for four days before the 911 call was made.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: ... some kind of a potentially convoluted statement that he had, you know, point (ph) his BMW in a specific part of the street, go around and tell Jennifer Campbell at the shoe store, Hey, I`m here, but that in between, he is suggesting to police initially that Hasanni was either kidnapped or somehow walked out of the car on his own. But police are telling us from day one they don`t believe Hasanni ever made it to Oakland.
GRACE: Tell us your recollection of what the story was, how this little boy went missing.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, the child was reported missing by Louis Ross to us. He called 911 and gave details that he had parked at the back of the Shuz of Rockford store here in Oakland, and he went around the front to contact Jennifer Campbell to have her open the rear door of the business. And Louis Ross said he walked to the front, then walked to the back...
GRACE: But right there, why? Why would you leave the baby in the back? I don`t understand that.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He gave certain responses to that question, and we did ask him that. And you know, based on the base being still an open investigation, you know, we can`t really divulge that. But he -- he couldn`t really articulate why, but he did say that when he walked back that he saw no signs of Hasanni Campbell.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
GRACE: Now, the reason we know Hasanni was alive and well four days before the 911 call reporting him missing is that we actually obtained surveillance video of Louis Ross, the acting father, with Hasanni, shopping in a Walmart. And that was four days, again, before Hasanni was reported gone.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I don`t leave my little girls anywhere. My oldest is 16 and 9 and 11. They go nowhere without me being so visible. Overprotective, you can call it. But because they are children, they have to be protected. And if it can happen, it will. It`s seldom, if ever, good. I make sure...
GRACE: Hold on just a moment, Darryl (ph).
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: ... they`re taken care of.
GRACE: Alex (ph), can you see a video monitor? Liz, did I see little Hasanni walking down the aisle of that store? Let`s see that video again. Take a look. You`re going to see Hasanni walking down -- this is from the Oakland Police Department video, video that they have -- there he is on the left. Take a look. Hold on.
There you go. There he is with the foster father, mother, and they`re shopping. Keep it on that video, Liz.
Sergeant Gus Galindo (ph) joining us, Oakland PD. What video is it that are we seeing? Explain.
SGT. GUS GALINDO, OAKLAND POLICE DEPARTMENT (via telephone): That`s the family four days before the disappearance of Hasanni, at a store, shopping for various items, and is the last footage that we have where anybody saw Hasanni Campbell. There was no reports of Hasanni Campbell from that time on to the time he went missing, other than what was reported by Louis Ross and Jennifer Campbell.
And Nancy, I`d just like to clarify. You`re describing this location as a shopping mall. It`s basically a residential area, a neighborhood with commercial shops basically around the corner from residents. So it`s not a shopping mall. It`s...
GRACE: I thought it was, like, a strip center, like, a shopping -- outdoor shopping center.
GALINDO: No, ma`am. It`s a commercial area, and the building where this happened, there`s apartments that you can enter through the front or the back, as well as the business. So it`s basically one building that has various addresses, but it`s not a shopping mall.
GRACE: I see. So was it, in fact, a shoe shop, as he told me?
GALINDO: I don`t recall specifically what he told you, if he said it was a -- it was a shopping mall. But similar to what he said to you, yes.
GRACE: OK, back to you, Henry K. Lee, reporter with "The San Francisco Chronicle," author of "Presumed Dead." You know what? That`s a really good point the sergeant has pointed out for us. What can you tell me about that area?
HENRY K. LEE, "SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE": Well, Sergeant Galindo told us, it`s what we call the Rockridge neighborhood of Oakland, in the northern part of the city, very well-to-do area, full of nice restaurants. It`s a -- it`s a tonier neighborhood of Oakland, if that is a turn of phrase that I use. Crime is present, but certainly not as prevalent as in other parts of the city.
So when we first heard that a little boy may have been kidnapped or disappeared from that area, a lot of red flags went up. The number one question we all had, Nancy, is how is it possible that a 5-year-old boy with cerebral palsy, with arch support braces -- how could he disappear in broad daylight -- this was about 4:15 PM Monday -- with so many people in the neighborhood in that area of town? (INAUDIBLE) possibly not possible.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Incredibly irresponsible that people don`t prepare and really watch their kids. I really wonder if that little boy was in the car that day at all. Why didn`t anybody see him? I understand the mom was working. But why is there no trace, no sighting for four days, no video, no neighbors, no people in the store? How could he have been there? He`s not very mobile. Why aren`t -- why isn`t everybody looking for him, noticing, looking out for a little boy who needs help to function?
GRACE: You know, what about that? To Sergeant Gus Galindo. What was that he was carrying out?
GALINDO: Based on the investigation, we learned that that was a box that contained a carseat for -- you know, just a standard carseat for a child.
GRACE: You are taking (ph) the last known sighting of little Hasanni Campbell, just five years old.
To Marc Klaas, president and founder, Klaas Kids Foundation, child advocate. What do you think, Marc?
MARC KLAAS, KLAAS KIDS FOUNDATION: Well, you know, his story -- I mean, everybody says his story doesn`t make sense. And it does make sense to him. It doesn`t make sense to anybody else. There were no surveillance cameras back there. How convenient is that? Nobody saw the little boy. There have been no sightings of the little boy. He had threatened to abandon the little boy. He moved away. He`s erased this from his history in his mind.
And I think the police were absolutely correct. They needed to do what they needed to do at that point. You know, there are organizations out there looking for Hasanni Campbell, but it`s a huge world, he`s a very small boy, and they have absolutely no idea where to search.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
GRACE: There was a lot of foot traffic. This was a strip mall, a shopping center, a lot of foot traffic, a lot of cars going by, not necessarily in back of the stores. I mean, we`ve all driven or at least seen down the back of a shopping center, where the trash cans and the cardboard boxes are, not a lot back there. But on the other side, there was a lot of foot traffic and a lot of cars.
Police got there, and they immediately had everyone stay. Nobody was allowed to leave the area for half an hour to an hour. None of those people report seeing Hasanni at all.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: August 10th, 2009, 5-year-old Hasanni Campbell vanishes in the blink of an eye.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hasanni Campbell was born with cerebral palsy. The 5-year-old boy wears braces on both legs, making it all the more confounding how he could simply disappear. Hasanni`s foster dad reportedly tells police he left the child alone when he briefly leaves his car to drop off Hasanni`s 1-year-old sister with family at a store.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I would pull into that parking spot, then proceed to, basically, get out of my side, walk around, open up the door for Hasanni. And then I proceed to the front of the store. I see their aunt. She knows why I`m there. I tell her, Open up the back door. I then circle back the same way I came, right around the corner, to basically hand over Aaliyah. By the time I got there, Jennifer`s already out of the store, walking toward me, asking, Where`s Hasanni?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Ross immediately calls police. Once on the scene, investigators fear Hasanni was either kidnapped or hiding. Search and rescue dogs are given the three-foot boy`s scent, but a scent is never picked up.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He frantically searched the neighborhood, asking people if anybody`s seen his son, and nobody can find him.
GRACE: Sergeant Galindo...
GALINDO: Yes, ma`am?
GRACE: ... what about this information that we have received? Were there latex gloves in the car?
GALINDO: There were latex gloves in the car, yes. That`s definitely clear -- at the time that it was recovered (INAUDIBLE)
GRACE: OK. Why would he have -- I don`t have latex gloves in my car. Do you, Sergeant? Why did he have latex gloves in his car?
GALINDO: That`s the question we`d like answered.
GRACE: Well, did you ask him? And what did he say?
GALINDO: You know, Louis Ross`s statement is very critical to this case. And obviously, we interviewed him quite extensively. And actually, we conducted several interviews with him prior to arresting him and the day we arrested him. And those are -- that`s information that we have to keep to ourselves because this is still an open investigation.
GRACE: I understand. What about...
GALINDO: It`s an ongoing case.
GRACE: ... landfills? Were the landfills alerted?
GALINDO: Yes. We searched -- we searched the area that we suspected Hasanni Campbell could have been dumped, basically, or discarded, and we alerted the landfills.
GRACE: Do you believe the boy was murdered in the home, Sergeant Galindo?
GALINDO: Based on my knowledge of the case, yes, I do.
GRACE: I bet it is just killing you that you cannot right now make an arrest in this case. Do you believe Hasanni was ever at that store, ever in that car?
GALINDO: No. That`s part of the basis for us making the arrest of Louis Ross. We never believed that Hasanni Campbell made it to Oakland on the day that he was reported missing by Louis Ross. And Louis Ross was the last person with Hasanni Campbell.
GRACE: I`ve got right here in front of me part of your investigation. It says that DFACS had been called out, that Ross sent a message to Jennifer Campbell, who is Hasanni`s aunt, Ross`s girlfriend -- it said, This is F-ing over. I will watch her" -- talking about the little girl -- "but I will be out on the BART" -- which is the rapid transit, Bay Area Rapid Transit. "It`s your responsibility, so F you."
There was also mention that he was having a lot of problems and concerns about raising a developmentally disabled child, and that he admitted to leaving the two children, one of them age 1, at home when he went to the bank?
GALINDO: Those facts are correct, yes.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Five-year-old Hasanni Campbell, last seen behind an Oakland shoe store August 10th, 2009, when the boy`s foster father, Louis Ross, says he parked his vehicle behind the store, leaving Hasanni behind.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I know I`m innocent and I know Louis is innocent.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Ross talked about being arrested and interrogated by police. He says investigators tried to deceive him shortly after they arrested his fiancee at the Union City BART station without Ross`s knowledge.
Ross reportedly told authorities he left Hasanni at the back door of the store. He says he ran inside to tell Hasanni`s foster mother and aunt that he arrived to drop off the boy, along with the boy`s 1-year-old sister. Ross, later arrested and jailed on suspicion of murder, was released after no charges were filed.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Jennifer was texting me back and forth. Her messages didn`t make sense. But I find out she wasn`t texting (INAUDIBLE) they had her in custody. They had her cell phone, texting me.
I told them the same story I gave the previous set of detectives. I told the same story I gave the other -- they got the same story, but they were not happy with the story that they got. They wanted something else.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GRACE: Now, interestingly, Louis Ross, the foster dad, actually agreed to come on our program. And during that appearance, I questioned him about a report we had that he flunked a polygraph, and he admitted very openly that he was told he flunked it, 99 percent of it, including one question that said, Do you know where Hasanni is right now?
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Authorities in Oakland, California, are searching for clues in the case of missing 5-year-old Hasanni Campbell, who is disabled with cerebral palsy.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Police say around 4:00 o`clock, they received a call for help from the 5-year-old boy`s father. Police say the father left the boy in the BMW in the back lot of the store while he walked around to the front to unlock the door. When the father opened the store`s back door, he told police, his son was gone.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I feel responsible (ph) (INAUDIBLE)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: According to reports, investigators searched Hasanni`s foster parents` home looking for a sword or cutting instrument. Authorities also reportedly searched Hasanni`s foster father`s, Louis Ross`s BMW, allegedly taking latex gloves, eight (ph) DNA swabs and four fingerprints. Ross reportedly failed a polygraph test issued by the FBI.
LOUIS ROSS, HASANNI`S FOSTER FATHER: We understood that the police have their job to do, and that part of that job is (INAUDIBLE) on everybody. So polygraph was basically a normal process.
This is a routine that we`ve had for the past four to five months because I actually am in a class from 6:00 to 9:30 on those nights. And there`s a time window where we needed someone to watch the kids. I would be at class and Jennifer would be at work, their aunt. So I would drop the kids off at the store, and they would stay in the back room and play with each other until she got off work. And they would all come home together, and I would see them at 9:30, 10:00 o`clock at night when I got out from class.
As normal routine, I would pull into the back -- there`s a little, small parking lot behind the store that accommodates about two to four cars. I would pull into that -- that parking spot, then proceed to basically get out of my side, walk around, open up the door for Hasanni. Before leaving the car, I popped the trunk of the car and opened the trunk and I shut the door. So at this time, his door is open and the trunk of my car is open.
And then I proceed to the front of the store. At the front of the store, I don`t walk inside. I`m still on the sidewalk. I see their aunt. She knows why I`m there. I tell her, Open up the back door. She turns to walk to the back (INAUDIBLE) open up the door. I then circle back the same way I came, right around the back corner, to basically hand over Aaliyah.
By the time I got there, Jennifer`s already out of the store, walking toward me, asking, Where`s Hasanni? I say, What do you mean, where`s Hasanni? And I look around to the side, and he`s no longer there.
GRACE: Mr. Ross, I understand that you volunteered to take a polygraph.
ROSS: Yes, I did. We have nothing to hide. And basically, it was just -- this has been a traumatic experience. We understood that the police had their job to do, and that part of that job is really on (ph) everybody. So polygraph was basically a normal process.
GRACE: How did you come to be his foster father?
ROSS: To make a long story short, his biological parents are not in a position mentally to take care of him, so Jennifer had gotten involved with their lives and visiting them. And we were approached by social services, would we be willing to take them. One of the concerns was Hasanni most likely would not be placed, but his sister, Aaliyah, who was the infant, would be placed. So they would be split up.
GRACE: To Dr. Glen Polanski (ph), board-certified physician joining us out of New York. Doctor Polanski, what would you have to find, what would you have to have left of a body to find it in a landfill?
DR. GLEN POLANSKI, PHYSICIAN: OK, Nancy, It depends how long the body was left. If it`s after a year, you may just be left with bones. If it`s depending on what`s in the landfill, the temperature out there -- you know, first the bugs come in. And as time goes on, the body is basically destroyed. After 50 days, maggots come in and just eat away the body, and all that is left after 50 days, approximately, maybe just hair and bones.
After that time, you know, other insects come in, bacteria come in, and basically, after about -- anywhere, depending on the temperature, 50 days to a year, you`re just left with simple bones. So at this point, it`s over a year, you may have nothing but bones.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: As an investigator, as a police officer, as a father, and I have to live with this every day.
GRACE: To Oakland and the search. Tonight, desperate for a missing 5-year-old little boy afflicted with cerebral palsy. He vanishes into thin air from the back seat of a car there just outside a shoe store at a busy suburban shopping center.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Authorities in Oakland, California, are searching for clues in the case of missing 5-year-old Hasanni Campbell, who is disabled with cerebral palsy. A family friend was reportedly with the boy Monday afternoon at a shoe store where Hasanni`s aunt works. According to reports, the family friend told cops he left Hasanni in his BMW just outside the back door of the store while he went inside the store briefly. When the friend came back out, the boy was gone.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There`s a lot of foot traffic here. There`s a lot of vehicle traffic. I asked people if they saw him, and no, they didn`t see him.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The entire are was shut down by investigators as search dogs combed for clues, police fearful Hasanni may have been abducted, reportedly taking the family friend`s BMW to the police yard to search for evidence.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Walk up to him, talk to him, call 911, and police will come and take custody of him, and hopefully, reunite him with his family.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We don`t have any new witnesses that have come forward. We have citizens that have called and have had concerns. They shared their thoughts with me. I`ve had a lot of people -- I`ve learned a lot about missing child investigations in this case, and a lot of people call out of concern. They think they saw something that may have been evidentiary. And when follow up on it, it`s not. But as far as any new hard facts or anything like that, we have not received anything at of that nature.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The disappearance of 6-year-old Hasanni Campbell from a Rockridge shoe store started a large police investigation and massive searches. Police arrested his foster parents for suspicion of murder, but the district attorney, citing insufficient evidence, dropped the charges. The boy has never been seen since. The foster parents have moved out of state.
Sherry Lynn Miller (ph), who founded a group called Citizens for the Lost and led many searches, has all but given up hope.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The person that did it knows, and one day he`ll have to meet his maker.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You think that`s the way justice will be done in that case?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Unfortunately in this case, that`s how justice will be done.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: In Oakland, Bob Melrose (ph), KCBS.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GRACE: I also was intrigued by the fact that the foster dad, the last one known to be with Hasanni, went out of his way to tell me the little boy was not as disabled with cerebral palsy as he had been portrayed in the media, that he was not wearing the silver metal braces on his leg, that actually, they were white braces underneath the pants.
I`ve never understood the relevance of that. I mean, the child had cerebral palsy and is missing. So I found it interesting in an odd way that Louis Ross went out of his way to make sure everybody understood that while the child was disabled, he wasn`t that disabled.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We conducted two major searches over in the Hayward Shoreline Regional Park area. That`s 1,600 acres of shoreline area there. We did one a week after the child went missing. We also did searches here in Oakland. But we did a follow-up search, I think it was in February sometime, after winter, to see if anything had been displaced by the winter storms, and we didn`t find anything.
GRACE: Straight out to Henry K. Lee, reporter with "The San Francisco Chronicle." Henry, it is very difficult for me to believe, just applying common sense, that a 5-year-old little boy who has cerebral palsy -- he`s got braces on both legs, he can barely walk -- could just walk away from the car and get lost. I don`t see it. And how could others not see him being taken from that car?
LEE: That`s right, Nancy. That`s a very good question. So the police are trying to see if, in fact, little Hasanni Campbell was taken away from the BMW that belongs to his foster parent. We have now learned that it`s his foster dad that was trying to drop him off at his biological aunt`s shoe store. So the fact that no one saw him either walking around or being kidnapped is of grave concern. We don`t know where he is at this moment. The police are investigating, Nancy.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
GRACE: We also interviewed police officers and detectives on the Hasanni case, and we learned several of the things that were in Louis Ross`s car, including latex gloves. And police wanted to find out why Ross would have latex gloves in his car. I also learned from interviewing them that they had spoken with Ross, but still didn`t have an answer as to why latex gloves were in the car. I find that odd. I would know why I would have latex gloves in the car, if I had them.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: This case got huge media coverage at the time for weeks and months on end. He`s an adorable little kid. There`s a little kindergarten-y picture with him and smiling little face and looks like little angel cheeks. You know, everybody wanted to -- everybody wants this kid found.
And it just is the whole mystery of his disappearance was sort of mind-boggling, especially when you`re in a -- what`s considered a fairly safe commercial district, where people go down there and bring their kids to get ice cream and to, you know, window shop.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A boy with cerebral palsy and who needs to walk with leg braces like this for support is not going to be easily missed by any witnesses in the area.
GRACE: What time did they call police?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (INAUDIBLE) shortly after the disappearance was discovered.
GRACE: OK. Who, if anyone else -- out to you, Matt Zarrell, our producer on the story. Who, if anyone else, saw the little boy in the BMW to start with?
MATT ZARRELL, NANCY GRACE PRODUCER: Well, that`s the big mystery at this point, Nancy, because this is a very, very busy area. There`s a lot of foot traffic, a lot of vehicle traffic. As of now, police say they haven`t talked to anyone who has seen the boy. They are interviewing registered sex offenders in the area. So that`s something they could look into.
GRACE: OK, maybe I`m crazy, Marc Klaas, founder of Klaas Kids Foundation, but why did he live the boy in a car? Why do you leave a child in an unlocked car in a shopping mall?
KLAAS: (INAUDIBLE) Nancy. Yesterday, I was in the Bay area and it was probably the hottest day of the year so far. Temperatures were in the high 80s, if they were anything. So just another reason why none of this story makes sense. I think what we have to do is find the other person that saw that little boy last and start establishing timelines from that point on.
GRACE: I`m not understanding the whole scenario. It doesn`t make sense to me...
KLAAS: No.
GRACE: ... the way it`s all unfolding.
Everybody, we are desperate, along with police and family, to find a 5-year-old little boy. He has cerebral palsy. He has braces on both legs. And he disappeared from a busy shopping center, a suburban shopping center outside a shoe store.
With me tonight -- and I know you will recognize him -- Lawrence Carter Long. He is the executive director for Disabilities Network of New York City. He has cerebral palsy, and once the poster boy literally for cerebral palsy. There he is. I remember that very well.
Lawrence, as always, thank you for being with us. Lawrence, from what you have learned about his disability, what do you believe about the possibility that he just got out of the car and walked off?
LAWRENCE CARTER LONG, DISABILITIES NETWORK OF NEW YORK CITY: You notice by the photograph that you showed there, I was a 5-year-old who wore leg braces, so I know exactly what that`s like. Life is not Hollywood. This is not "Forrest Gump." He`s not going to shuck those braces and run down the street.
I think there are some things we need to be looking at here that haven`t been asked in the usual media outlets. One of the things I noticed in looking at the establishment is we were told he was parked in the back so that the child could have easier access to the back entrance, which was accessible. If you look at Google maps or some of the news footage that`s shown the establishment from the front, you also notice that the front entrance is wheelchair-accessible. There`s no step.
If both entrances were accessible, why was the child left in back? How long was the child left in back? Those are questions that we need to be asking.
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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Ross reportedly told authorities he left Hasanni at the back door of the store. He says he ran inside to tell Hasanni`s foster mother and aunt that he arrived to drop off the boy.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He wore little braces on his ankles, so he didn`t walk very far. It was a little bit hard for him. So standard operating procedure for his uncle, or Louis Ross, was in the end of the day, they would pull up to the back of a store. It`s a shoe store in Oakland, in the Rockridge neighborhood, which is very safe and very trendy.
And they would come to the back of the store. And they left Hasanni back there while Louis went with Hasanni`s sister -- went around to the front to let Jennifer Campbell, the foster mother, know that they were there. Jennifer worked at Shuz of Rockridge, in the shoe store.
And so she was supposed to open the back door so then Hasanni can come in, and he wouldn`t have to walk all the way around. Well, when they did that on August 10th of 2009, she opened the door and said, Where`s Hasanni? And Louis said, Well, what do you mean? He was right there. And he had disappeared. That was the last time that, apparently, anybody had seen Hasanni.
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GRACE: While I was speaking with police -- and this really set me back when they said this -- I posed to them a hypothetical. Do you believe that the boy was actually murdered in the home, and all this story about being him at the back of the shoe store and they come around and they go through and he`s gone -- that is a ruse? And the cops, the police, told me flat-out, Yes, we do think he was murdered in the home.
Now, if you look at the scenario, that`s not that surprising. But when they said it, I recall being very taken aback. I don`t know if surprise is the right word for it, maybe a shock or sadness, because when you listen to Louis Ross talk, he makes it all sound so normal and believable that he left his child in the alley behind the shopping center, with the trash cans and the cardboard boxes. He just, you know, says it so calmly. You think maybe the child is still alive. Maybe somebody did kidnap the baby. And when the cops told me, Yes, we do think the child was murdered in the home, I was very taken aback.
Both foster parents, Louis Ross and Jennifer Campbell, insist that day are innocent and that they had nothing to do with Hasanni`s disappearance. And to this day, Hasanni has not been spotted or found, nor have his remains been found. The search for Hasanni Campbell goes on. If Hasanni is still alive, he would have just celebrated his 10th birthday.
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