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CNN Saturday Morning News

Police: Gunman in Santa Monica Shootings Killed Four People, Wounded Five; Three American Soldiers Killed in Afghanistan in Suspected Insider Attacker; Cleveland Kidnapper Facing Over 300 Counts in Indictment

Aired June 08, 2013 - 09:00   ET

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

PAMELA BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning, everyone. I'm Pamela Brown.

VICTOR BLACKWELL, CNN ANCHOR: I'm Victor Blackwell -- 9 o'clock on the East Coast, wake up, everybody; 6 o'clock out on the West Coast. Thanks for starting your day with us.

We're starting this morning on the West Coast in California, where we're still waiting to learn the name of the man who went on a shooting rampage yesterday. This happened in the oceanfront city of Santa Monica.

Authorities now say the suspect killed four people, including his father and his brother, and wounded five others before police killed him. There is one person who is in critical condition. Unfortunately, that death toll could go up today.

Police say the shooting spree started at a home near Santa Monica College and then spilled onto the campus. It all happened just a short drive, maybe 10 minutes from where President Obama was holding a fundraiser. We don't know the shooter's name but police say he's 25 to 35, apparently wore black tactical gear, was armed with pistols and an AR-15 rifle with extra clips.

CNN's Miguel Marquez is in Santa Monica this morning.

And, Miguel, we have been with you all morning and we know, unfortunately, there is that one person who is just holding on this morning.

MIGUEL MARQUEZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, well, we're not sure they are. Police last night said that the person who was taken, one of those individuals who was taken to Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center went through surgery and was in a very, very critical condition.

There is reporting that person has expired today, so it sounds like unfortunately we may hear some bad news a little later today, that that death toll will go up to five.

Meanwhile, we are getting a better sense of how this investigation is unfolding.

And just to give you guys a sense of it, this -- what felt like it took hours to unfold was literally just minutes, less than 15 minutes from the time that house was burned down, the two people in there shot, the relatives of the shooter, from what we understand, to the time that they got to the confrontation with the police in the library at Santa Monica College was less than 15 minutes.

Along the way, left nine different crime scenes, five to seven different locations in Santa Monica, where this person shot up the place. I spoke to one witness who described the shooter.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BETH TOPPING, WITNESS: It's terrifying, you know, there was a lot of panic. I realized that I don't really know what to do in this kind of situation, because I instinctively ran and I probably shouldn't have.

MARQUEZ: He never brought the gun down to bear on you even though you saw him twice and well within range?

TOPPING: I was well within range. He was coming right toward us and the whole time he his gun close to his chest. And he never pointed it at us. And the reason it felt so strange is because he was just walking down the hallway so casually. He wasn't raging, he wasn't in a chaotic state at all.

MARQUEZ: Did he say anything?

TOPPING: No.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MARQUEZ: Absolutely frightening, her accounting of this; but it is interesting. She and other witnesses we spoke to said that he seemed to be looking for specific people because he wasn't bearing down on them.

He hijacked a car right outside of that house and directed the woman, kept her in the car to make her drive and directed that woman here to Santa Monica College. It is not clear what that relationship is yet. We expect more information from police a little later today; hopefully we will get more answers.

Pamela? Victor? Back to you guys.

BLACKWELL: All right. Miguel Marquez for us all afternoon and evening and now up with us this morning, thank you.

(MUSIC PLAYING)

BROWN: Three American soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan and it may be another case of an insider attack, we're learning. The soldiers were gunned down in the eastern part of the country in Paktia province.

A NATO official says someone wearing an Afghan army uniform turned his weapon on the American soldiers there. These attacks have plagued NATO forces in Afghanistan ahead of the 2014 drawdown. We'll get you more information as soon as we know it. We'll keep you updated throughout the morning.

And back here at home, a pregnant actress in Texas accused of mailing ricin-laced letters to President Obama and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Federal investigators say she tried to blame it all on her husband.

CNN's national correspondent Susan Candiotti joins us now from New York.

So, Susan, what is the FBI saying about this woman?

SUSAN CANDIOTTI, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Pamela, to hear authorities tell it, this was one troubled marriage and if the charges are true, you've got a wife who went to some pretty bizarre lengths to get back at her husband.

Her name is Shannon Richardson, she's also an actress, stage name Shannon Rodgers and Shannon Guess.

In court papers the FBI charges her with, in effect, setting up her husband, accusing her of writing and sending letters tainted with ricin to President Obama, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the mayor's director of a gun control group in Washington.

In court papers the FBI says Richardson planted evidence in and around her house. For example she looked up ricin on the computer to create a history, put a Tupperware container with ingredients inside that could be use to make ricin. She allegedly scattered castor beans in the trunk of her husband's car.

She allegedly mailed the letters in Texas, then drove to Shreveport, Louisiana, and met with the FBI to accuse her husband of sending the ricin letters.

The letters read in part, "You will have to kill me and my family before you get my guns. Anyone wants to come to my house will get shot in the face. The right to bear arms is my constitutional God-given right and I will exercise that right till the day I die."

The FBI interviewed her husband; he blamed his wife. So it was he said/she said. She allegedly failed a polygraph and then told the FBI her husband made her do it. Now she's in jail and according to the FBI she's pregnant and her husband filed for a divorce just a couple of days ago, Pamela.

BROWN: All right. Susan Candiotti, thank you so much.

CANDIOTTI: You're welcome.

BLACKWELL: Three thousand years behind bars, 3,000 years, the possible sentence that Ariel Castro faces, now that he's been slammed with 329 charges, accused of rape, kidnapping and aggravated murder, after holding three women captive, police say, in his home for a decade. More coming up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) BLACKWELL: Ten minutes after the hour now.

President Obama says sweeping up Americans' telephone records and monitoring Internet activity from online users overseas amount to modest encroachment on privacy, and those encroachments can help prevent terror attacks. The response on Capitol Hill this week, not partisan politics as usual. Listen.

SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R), S.C.: I'm a Verizon customer. It doesn't bother me one bit for the National Security Administration to have my phone number, because what they're trying to do is find out what terrorist groups we know about and individuals and who the hell they're calling.

SEN. MARK UDALL (D), COLO.: There ought to be a discussion, because the effectiveness of these programs has been trumpeted. I would suggest, based on what I know, that there are a lot of other reasons that we've thwarted terrorists.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLACKWELL: Well, that was Mark Udall a top democratic member of the Intelligence Committee, telling CNN's Dana Bash in an exclusive interview, this is an overreach and it's far from the only way the government can fight terrorism.

But what does all this really mean for you? Is your private information safe? Or are you part of the government's data mining? CNN's Rene Marsh is looking into this. She has been looking into this for some time now. She joins us.

Rene, tell us more about what the president is saying. I think a lot of people were surprised yesterday with that you can't have 100 percent security and 100 percent privacy.

RENE MARSH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That's right, Victor, many Americans, they may be wondering if the government is spying in on their phone calls, for example, or even their Internet activity, but President Obama, very clear, he is insisting that that's not happening.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Nobody's listening to the content of people's phone calls. My assessment and my team's assessment was that they help us prevent terrorist attacks.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MARSH: All right, but critics say that even if the government isn't listening in to conversations, collecting information like phone numbers and locations could mean problems for innocent Americans.

I spoke with one critic who said just that. Take a listen to her.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) CINDY COHN, ATTORNEY: The most dangerous thing that could happen with this information is that you get misidentified as a suspect in a crime or a national security investigation, based upon your patterns of behavior rather than anything that you've actually done.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MARSH: All right, well, companies that turn over customer information under court order may not be happy about it, but the law makes it very hard for them to say no. Victor?

BLACKWELL: So Rene, what about the Internet? Because the first headline most people saw was Verizon. We know now that maybe it goes farther than that.

What about that program?

What's the extent of the communications that are monitored there?

And what's the government surveillance online?

MARSH: All right. Well, some news reports, they did suggest that the government was tapping directly into the servers of major tech companies, and that would essentially make it possible for the government to intercept things like e-mails, video, files sent online. But the administration is insisting that by law, they cannot run that kind of surveillance on American citizens.

They say that this program is used exclusively to monitor foreign threats and the tech companies themselves, they were quick to deny that they are giving the government unfettered access, saying that they only cooperate when a court order is issued. Victor?

BLACKWELL: Yes, we saw the companies issue that statement, that government has no direct access to our servers, one after another.

Rene Marsh, thank you so much. We'll continue to follow it.

Quick break, we'll be back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Cleveland kidnapping suspect Ariel Castro has been indicted on 329 charges, meaning that he could get upwards of 3,000 years behind bars if convicted on all these charges.

BLACKWELL: The former school bus driver is accused of holding Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight in his home for 10 years, give or take.

The indictment describes years of brutal assaults from taping one of the victims to a pole to chaining her to a car with a vacuum cord tied around her neck. One charge accuses the 52-year-old Castro of aggravated murder for purposely causing the end of one pregnancy.

BROWN: Here's a more detailed breakdown of the indictment, let's take a look: 139 counts of rape, 177 counts of kidnapping, seven counts of gross sexual imposition, three counts of felonious assault.

BLACKWELL: Pamela, you've been covering this story, you've been there several times and we were talking during the break, 329 counts. Those will be very difficult individually over a decade to prove.

Do you think that the number really is to maybe intimidate the defense team into taking a deal?

BROWN: It very well could be the case, Victor. I was at that press conference with prosecutor Tim McGinty. And he made it clear he's going to aggressively go after Ariel Castro.

And what I think this reflects, the 329 counts, I think it reflects that they want to make sure that he's put behind bars and at the very least stays behind bars for the rest of his life.

And I think that, as you said, it might be a way to intimidate him and his attorneys to work out a plea deal and also a way to make sure these victims, these three young women, don't have to testify in court.

Obviously, they're still going through a lot, still healing. And the hope is they won't have to get on that stand and face Castro in person.

BLACKWELL: And the three women have been staying away from cameras, away from reporters.

But is there any way to know their reaction to this?

BROWN: Well, as you mentioned, Victor, I've been to Cleveland three times since these women were rescued and I've been speaking with friends of the victims, of their families. I spoke to one friend last night, and said it was like a party at the home of one of these victims after the indictment was released.

I think there was a sense of jubilation, of happiness, that it's clear that Castro will likely be behind bars the rest of his life, at least. And I think it's just a sense of relief. They don't have to worry about Castro coming back after them, so definitely a sense of happiness with these victims.

BLACKWELL: All right, Pamela, we will of course continue to follow this.

Now they are veterans and mothers, and many of them don't have a place to call home after having served their country.

BROWN: Young, black female veterans are particularly at risk for this. But this week's CNN Hero took it upon herself to battle this troubling problem, after once finding herself without a home and without help. Meet Jaspen Boothe.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JASPEN BOOTHE, CNN HERO: When Americans think of veterans they are only thinking about the men.

CHIQUITA: My name is Chiquita and I'm an Operation Enduring Freedom veteran.

SANDRA: My name is Sandra and I'm an Army veteran.

BOOTHE: Women are the forgotten heroes of America. A lot of them have fallen on hard times.

ANNE MARIE: My name is Anne Marie and I'm a reservist in the Air Force and I was homeless.

BOOTHE: My name is Jaspen Boothe, I'm a captain in the Army National Guard and it's my mission to get homeless female veterans and their children back on their feet.

In 2005 I was called to serve up in Iraq. During my mobilization, I lost everything in Hurricane Katrina, and the very next month I was diagnosed with aggressive stage 2 cancer. I was a single mother and 28 at the time.

The VA didn't have any programs available. When I left the VA and went to Social Services, you were not a soldier. You were treated basically as a baby's mama or a crackhead.

It wasn't until I relocated to D.C. that I started to hear about homeless female veterans. That's when I decided to found an organization that would house them and their children.

Let us know what you need. I am like a procurement whisperer.

We also do offer wraparound supportive services, child care assistance, employment placement.

I see the Marines. Hoorah, hoorah.

We are not a pity party environment. We give you all the tools that you need, but your success in this program is up to you.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: This little piggy goes to the market.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I have a job now, this is my space to prepare myself to be better. Jazz set me up for success.

BOOTHE: Why do I do what I do? It's the right thing to do as an American and it's the right thing to do as a soldier.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLACKWELL: Well, he's interviewed Oprah, Hillary Clinton and many others.

BROWN: Yes, not a bad track record there, and now we welcome him to the CNN family, you'll hear from the newest member of the CNN lineup, up next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLACKWELL: We've got something new coming to CNN tomorrow night, a new show with a big name, a really, really big name and a long name, too.

BROWN: Yes, and I actually -- I've been practicing that name a few times, because I'm about to have to say it.

He is the newest team member for CNN and his name -- here we go -- George Stroumboulopoulos.

BLACKWELL: Stroumboulopoulos!

BROWN: Not to be confused with George Stephanopoulos.

BLACKWELL: Yes, Stroumboulopoulos.

BROWN: (Inaudible) distinction.

And, of course, we've talked about all the celebrity guests that he's interviewed and that he's going to have on his new show.

But since the show's title shares his name, you know, I had to ask about that first.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEORGE STROUMBOULOPOULOS, CNN HOST: It's been my name for my entire life. You couldn't make that name up. But there are times when I'll have to fill out a form or something and I'll have to stop and recalibrate and go, what am I doing, because it's so unwieldy, my name.

BROWN: Well, now America is going to have to get used to saying that because that is the name of you new show airing on CNN. It's premiering this Sunday at 10:00 pm, called "STROUMBOULOPOULOS." And then it will be on Friday nights at 11:00 pm.

So let's talk about that, George.

What can we expect from your new show?

How is it going to be different from the rest of the late night shows?

STROUMBOULOPOULOS: I'm not a comic, right, so I'm not a standup comic by nature. I'll try to make you laugh from time to time, but I'm not driven by the funny. That's not my reason for being, so I don't have that pressure of having to go to the joke.

I'm more interested in these long forum conversations and I think that CNN is the perfect home because the things CNN that values, the things that I value that I know a large segment of the audience values, is a real human connection.

And I can do that without having to do shtick. I admire the comics, man. What they do is really difficult, I just -- that's not my path. So this is more of an interview show, kind of old school. I grew up watching Tom Schneider and I love listening to George Carlin and Public Enemy and The Clash. So I think I can incorporate all of that into this kind of talk show.

BROWN: And we were talking earlier; you've interviewed so many celebrities, Oprah Winfrey, Hillary Clinton. You focus on what drives them, what motivates them.

So I want to ask you, what drives you?

What got you into this business and where does your passion come from?

STROUMBOULOPOULOS: The truth is I was really young when I discovered punk rock and rap, hip-hop. And I really liked the fact that these guys were young and angry and didn't really know what was going on, but they could see that the world had a lot of injustice. And so they decided to lash out in a creative way.

That's what kind of inspired me to care about politics, The Clash and PE and bands like that. And as I furthered that, I discovered that communication was pretty powerful. It's kind of like the way humans pollinate, right? We share ideas and we have these connections so that we don't feel so alone. And I found that being in interviews just felt like being in conversations, and I get the most out of it.

The truth is -- and it's probably your experience as well -- that when I'm on air, I kind of forget I'm on air. I just think I'm talking to somebody, if they're at home or on the streetcar watching it on their phone later and they've had a hell of day and we're just there keeping them company.

So my goal in life is to be good company and if I can get the people beside me to be that as well, then I feel like I've done my job.

BROWN: Let's talk about who your first guests are going to be.

STROUMBOULOPOULOS: Marty short is going to be on the first show; Wiz Khalifa is going to be on and Keanu Reeves and I. And upcoming episodes, Eckhart Tolle, Bill Maher, Betty White, Snoop is going to be on the show. So I like the range that we're able to hit with that. But that first show -- plus Martin Short has been really one of the sweetest guys in my entire career. He's been one of the nicest guys to me.

BROWN: That's great. You don't forget that, you know?

All right. Last question here for you, George.

You've interviewed so many celebrities.

Who would you love to interview most that you haven't been able to yet?

STROUMBOULOPOULOS: Ooh, I'd love to interview Bill Gates. I think Bill Gates has changed the world in a gigantic way, him and Jeff Besos. I'd love to interview those guys. And on the music side, it's all about Neil Young. I'm singularly focused on Neil Young. It was Patti Smith; I just interviewed her. So now it's all about Neil Young for me. He's the greatest of all time.

BROWN: All right, Neil Young. Thanks so much, George, good luck with everything.

STROUMBOULOPOULOS: Thank you, it's good to see you. See you soon.

BLACKWELL (voice-over): Catch the all new series " STROUMBOULOPOULOS," tomorrow night at 10:00 pm Eastern, right after the season finale of "ANTHONY BOURDAIN: PARTS UNKNOWN."

BROWN: The controversial race to save 10-year-old Sarah Murnaghan. In 45 minutes I'll talk to Congressman Tom Price about Sarah's fight to breathe; her family's wrestling red tape to get her a lung transplant. But Sarah's condition is worsening and she needs help now.

Plus we'll have much more on the Santa Monica shooting rampage, live from California.

Well, thank you so much for watching today. I'll see you back here at the top of the hour.

BLACKWELL: We've got a lot coming up. Be sure to stay with us right here on CNN.

"YOUR MONEY" starts right now.