Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - How a deadly school shooter 'slipped' through cracks and went on murder rampage

Episode Date: February 16, 2018

The FBI acknowledges it failed to tracked down school shooter Nikolas Cruz after being tipped off to a threatening YouTube post, but that missed opportunity was not the only red flag missed. Nancy Grace discusses the investigation into the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School with experts, including hate crime expert Brian Levin, security analyst Rob Hessell, former DEA agent David Katz, forensics expert Joseph Scott Morgan, child welfare law specialist Ashley Willcott, psychologist Caryn Stark, and reporter John Lemley. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You're listening to an iHeart Podcast. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace on Sirius XM Triumph, Channel 132. Around 2.30 p.m., the Broward County Sheriff's Office responds to reports of a shooting with multiple injuries at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. Oh, my God. I had the gunshot victim. He's by the entrance to West Glades on the west side of the school. Kids were freaking out. Some kids froze. Some kids were on their phones. SWAT teams go from room to room, securing areas before allowing students and teachers to evacuate.

Does he know where the shooter is? The Broward County Sheriff says at least 17 people are dead. 17 people. It's insane. It's unnecessary. There's no words to describe how I feel right now. I was shaking. I was panicking. It was just all about panic about the school. One of the worst school shootings in U.S. history goes down the morning after. Everybody's saying coulda, woulda, shoulda. Looking back at all the red flags that were waving at the authorities right under their noses. This, as the defendant, there is no doubt this is the shooter,

appears in court being hugged by his defense attorney who says he's just misguided. That is cold comfort for the families of 17 dead children. I'm Nancy Grace. This is Crime Stories, and we want justice. More important than justice even, we want the truth. Joining me right now, an all-star panel, John Limley, Karen Stark, Ashley Wilcott, Joseph Scott Morgan, David Katz, Rob Hessel, Brian Levin. carefully bringing in a semi-assault rifle extra magazines of ammunition hidden in a backpack smoke grenades thought to pull the fire alarm to create

chaos and confusion and bring his victims out so he could pick them off one by one like shooting a fish in a barrel and then thinking to put on a hat and blend in with all the students pouring out to leave undetected to stop at a sub sandwich place to stop at a mcdonald's and kick back are you kidding me, John Limley? What happened in court? According to authorities, the gunman who, as we now know, killed 17 people inside that school in Florida, has told police that he heard voices in his head that gave him instructions for the attack. The voices were described as demons by law enforcement sources. Meanwhile, it emerged that police were called to Nicholas Cruz's family's Parkland home

39 times since 2010. The sheriff's office received a range of emergency calls that included mentally ill person, child elderly abuse, domestic disturbance, missing persons, several others. Cruz moved in with a friend's family with his adoptive mother, 68-year-old Linda Cruz. She passed away in November from pneumonia. During this first court appearance on Thursday, Cruz, as you've mentioned, was comforted by his public defender as he was ordered held without bail in connection to the deadly shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on Wednesday. I got a question. Have we heard anything to suggest that the demon voices told him to go to Subway Sandwich and pick up a six-inch white?

Because I don't think so. That hasn't emerged. I hear all that. But I'm looking at the images taken from a student's cell phone. It shows a girl's lifeless body lying in the middle of a classroom in a pool of blood. Neighbors and relatives saying that his mom, who adopted him as a child along with her husband, the Cruz family, sacrificed herself to give them a beautiful home, a loving home, to make their life better, to do everything she could for them. All the times, many of the times, police were called to their home, it was for

harassing neighbors. This boy harassing neighbors to the point they would call police. But after all those calls, not one single arrest. Joining me now, Rob Hessel, author of Safe City from Law Enforcement to Neighborhood Watches, a security and safety analyst who specializes in how to keep your community safe. Rob, what do you make of it? This is horrible, and all the signs were there that this boy had such a troubled past. And I'm not sure how he was able to assemble a arsenal of weapons but even more concerning for me was how was this boy who had a history of of violence who'd already been kicked out of two schools and identified by a school that he was a threat how did he get on campus in the first place that's my question to Brian Levin director of the center for the study

of hate and extremism at University of California, San Bernardino. Brian, thank you for being with us. Thank you. I'm glad you're with us, Brian. You know, at first, some extremist right-wing nutjob group claimed he was their member. That's been debunked. Yeah, that was first reported when there was some rumors on 4chan and various entities, respectable entities, by the way, such as the ADL, as well as the Associated Press, spoke to the rather not very illuminating head of a hate group called the Republic of

Florida who said that this individual went to a training camp and then he later backtracked on it. The sheriff, Sheriff Israel down in Broward County did not confirm a connection during the day. And then later on, papers throughout the state appeared to have debunked that. That being said, it is not unusual for extremist groups of all types to try to ensnare unstable people. It just appears in this case it didn't happen. The Florida gunman now says, quote, demon voices tell him how to pull off a school shooting.

Police revealing, as John Limley has reported, they were called out to the family home 39 times. 39 times. Joining me, Ashley Wilcott, lawyer and child advocate. I mean, this was planned. This was not some snap, as it's referred to in the vernacular. There's no defense called snap. But that didn't happen.

This was planned out. Everybody, quote, knew he was the sick, weird, psychotic guy. That's the way the classmates describe him to me. Their words, not mine. The school had kicked him out. He'd been kicked out of two schools before. He was told he couldn't come back in a backpack because they were afraid to have a gun and bullets. Bill Bondsman out of Mississippi called the FBI six months ago and told them about this guy making threats on schools online.

Ashley, you know, I always side with law enforcement. No, this is totally lame. Heads need to roll. They said they couldn't identify him. Hello. He had his, his real name and his face on there. Yeah. Right. Yeah. This is a situation where clearly you had a troubled child and he's done all kinds of things that he could have been held responsible for and could have been charged with and could have been held responsible for and could have been charged with and could have been prosecuted for and could have been jailed for. None of that happened. The other thing that's really troubling to me is that here he says, oh, I heard demons in my voices,

but everything you just laid out, Nancy, makes very, very clear. It was premeditated, well planned out. And then the whole, oh, he blended in with the students walked away went to get something to eat went to subway it is too premeditated for me to believe that all of a sudden here are voices that said oh the demon's telling me go kill all these people i am a future school shooter i want to be a professional school shooter David Katz CEO of the global security group active shooter response expert former DEA firearms expert terror analyst you know when we think of terror we think of the evil Isis we think of 9-1-1 the the attack on the World Trade Center. I will never forget that, being in New York that day.

But this is just as terrifying to those children. Under the law, they are children that were gunned down in their own school. When I drove away from the twin school this morning, my heart, my stomach just felt sick. I actually drove back through David Katz to make sure the doors were all locked. Well, it doesn't matter to the victims whether the shooter was ideologically motivated or psychotic like this. This is one of these

incidents where every single thing done from every possible aspect was exactly opposite what we teach people to do. As I like to say, bass-ackwards. Yeah, I mean, there's no, I mean, in every single, you know, in some cases there are no warning signs.

In this one, I mean, how much more would this kid have had to have done before someone took it seriously? I'm really interested to see what the FBI did with that information that was gotten, gained from that bail bondsman. Somebody, if some, if no one wrote a report on that, you're exactly right. Heads got to roll. If there is a report in DEA, we would do, if we didn't open a case, we would do, it's called the general file report. Maybe it is a general file report. Why wasn't, why wasn't that followed up?

Why is there 39, 39 visits by the police and not a single arrest? You mentioned earlier how he was able to assemble an arsenal. Well, if he had a felony conviction, you can't buy a gun legally. And certainly at this point in our culture, there needs to be some mechanism by which if a school administrator or school psychologist or some medical professional or otherwise identifies a person, a child, anyone, who probably should be on the gun equivalent of the no-fly list, we've got to have a mechanism where this person cannot walk into a sporting goods store, a gun store, and purchase a firearm, period.

I'm just looking at the crew's home. I mean, Jackie, have you seen this? Yes. I mean, Ashley, it looks like it's a French design. I mean, it's nice. It's a beautiful manicured lawn. I know all you men just tune out because it's not gonna mean anything, mean anything to you except for Ashley and Karen Stark and I. We're going to know what we're talking about here. Guys, Ashley, Karen, there's a beautiful stand of trees beside the home. It's a well-kept yard. The shrubs, there's a lot of shrub work. That takes time and money we know this there's a white paved driveway leading up to a circular roundabout in front of the home with an attached two-door two-car garage possibly three a giant archway over the front uh this this is a well-kept home in the mediterranean style and somebody had some

money somewhere and took care of the home sources tell me karen stark new york psychologist joining us karen that the mother and the father wanted these children desperately, took in him and his brother. I haven't heard much about the brother. And she spent her life, she worked and was devoted to, quote, giving them a beautiful home. And I don't mean necessarily looking beautiful, which it does. I mean, hey, I move into that heartbeat uh but a beautiful home as in loving homey comforting for these two boys that she really devoted her life to them and the father wanted them just as much now he passed away I think of a heart attack several years ago about five years ago uh then the mom just passed away with pneumonia

recently in the last month or so but all people could say argue karen start that he went off the rails when his mom passed away but these 39 arrest reports that john limley brian levin rob hessel and david katz were talking about Those all happened while the mom was alive. He was kicked out of school. He reportedly brought a bullet to school in his backpack one day, got in a fight with his ex-girlfriend's new boyfriend because he had been abusive to her. I mean, all this was brewing before the mom passed away. So before we start saying little orphan annie let's look at the

facts okay let's look at the facts and this is what i would tell juries the truth doesn't always taste good going down but it is our duty not to turn away from the truth to look at it and analyze it and come up with a solution so what do you make make of it, Karen Stark? You're the shrink. Well, not that there is a particular profile for this, Nancy, because school shooters are not from the same kind of backgrounds and they're not all the same, but there are things about school shooters that he fits completely. He has a history of violence and neighbors all talk about it. Other students talk about the fact that his favorite thing to talk about were guns, knives. He would post pictures of animals that he had killed. He liked to shoot rats. And so when you bring up the fact that his mother died in November, all I can say about that is the trauma of his mother dying just exacerbated what was already there.

It was a planned attack, which is not unusual. There was nothing impulsive about it. And he let people know that this was going to happen the defense attorney is arguing joe scott i know you're chomping at the bit hold on ladies first joseph scott morgan ashley wilcott people are already claiming i'm referring to his defense attorney quote the child he's 19 is deeply troubled and he has endured significant trauma that stems from the loss of his mother okay i i hear that because i just lost my dad i hear about i understand that but that is not a defense ashley that is not a defense you go tell that to the families of these 17

children that are dead that's it it is not a defense and it does not excuse the behavior. So here's the thing. Repeated trauma scientifically now shows changes the varying chemistry in children. So does it affect children? A hundred percent. Does it excuse these crimes, murders, killing sprees? Absolutely not. And so it cannot be posed as a defense or an excuse. And it's not a legal defense. Now to forensics expert, professor of forensics at Jackson State University, Joseph Scott Morgan. Joe Scott, I know you have very carefully gone over what we have learned regarding the physical evidence. I know that you cannot date what injury was first, but from the traffic pattern, from the entry, the exit, what we know about the way this went down,

we can determine what happened chronologically. In your mind, Joe Scott, I want to hear your analysis. I've been waiting on this i was i was reflecting on this uh nancy and one of the things that that kind of uh struck me uh was uh actually it'll be 20 years ago next month was uh the jonesborough arkansas shooting uh where the two kids came to school and initiated a fire alarm. And those little kids came out at that middle school and these two guys were, two kids were up on a hillside and they began to open up and I saw some connectivity.

I've described this environment that he created as utter chaos. And that's what we're going to see. That's what the police are currently seeing as they're working this scene. And Broward County is tops when it comes to crime scene processing. They're also being aided by the ATF as well as the FBI teams. And it is a gigantic jigsaw puzzle. And if I could just paint this picture very, very quickly for you, one of the most striking things that they're seeing in the scene right now is a tremendous amount of blood evidence. And it's not just individual puddles. You have people that are bleeding out. You had mentioned earlier that there was an image of a young motionless child on the floor. You will have people that have stepped over her in a frenzy to get out. You have people tracking

blood everywhere. There will be a tremendous amount of blood spatter in the immediate areas, not just on the floor, but on the walls. And then we have to think about the firearms evidence relative to the expended brass, which are the little casings that come out of this weapon. Not to mention the projectiles that have passed through the bodies, that have walls lodged in things and they will literally find projectiles laying on the floor. This takes us to a bigger picture here because all of those people that have undergone surgery, you will have fragmented projectiles as well as intact projectiles that they're recovering. I'm sure that the police are on top of this. This is multi layered because these people went to multiple hospitals. And then that brings us, of course, to the door of the medical examiner.

Their day yesterday, been involved in mass fatalities. You might remember the day traitor shooting in Atlanta, Nancy. It is utterly chaos. Sometimes you don't feel like that you're prepared to deal with it, but somehow you muddle through and you have to remain focused. And that's that's the case. We don't have a guy that's gone out and has essentially ended his life in this case where there's nothing to prosecute. This is, as you well know, prosecutable. And I can tell you they're going over this thing with a fine tooth comb. And it is an absolute nightmare to piece together. Take a listen to Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel as he remembers the names of 17 dead children. Carmen Shentrup, Meadow Pollock, Peter Wang, Nicholas Duaret, Christopher Hickson,

my very, very, very special friend who I'll miss, Aaron Feiss, Luke Hoyer, Alana Petty, Jamie Gutenberg, Martin Duque Anguiano, Alyssa Alhadeff, Helena Ramsey, Scott Beagle, Joaquin Oliver, Carol Loughran, Gina Montalto, and Alexander Schachter. May they rest in peace and may God comfort their families. I want to pause right now and thank our sponsor making our investigation with this panel of incredible experts as we investigate the Florida shooting possible. It's a legal zoom. And as they say, and they're totally correct, small business is the hot topic. National Small Business Month at LegalZoom, perfect timing.

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Don't miss this. Check out LegalZoom.com today. Special savings when you enter code Nancy in the referral box at checkout. LegalZoom, where life meets legal. LegalZoom.com. Thank you. As I traveled down one of the back roads, it's a heavily residential area. I happened to come across, it was just myself.

There was not a lot of people out. A couple people walking their dogs in the area. Uh, as I continued down this roadway, uh, I discovered an individual walking on the sidewalk that was wearing the clothing description that had been given over the radio. Uh, he looked like a typical high school student. Uh and for a quick moment I thought could this be the person? Is this who I need to stop? Uh training kicked in. I pulled my vehicle over immediately, engaged the suspect. He complied with my commands and was taken into custody without any issues. You just heard the officer who actually apprehends Cruz, describing how he found him and how he did not resist but take a listen now to a high school football coach telling CNN

about the assistant coach and athletic director gunned down the first part of my day is gonna be terrible when I don't see my buddy at the gate. That's going to be the hard part. Then I'm going to walk in my office and not see Chris, who always said good morning to me. And that's going to be hard. And I'm sure it's going to be hard for all of us. You know, I don't know. But do the best we can. To Ashley Wilcott, child advocate and lawyer, Ashley, I can already see the defense shaping up.

And this is where mental defense comes from, in my experience from the courtroom. If you're not caught red-handed, you'll say, I didn't do it. If you're caught with DNA, for instance, you'll say, okay, I was there, but I didn't do it. You don't have a video. If you have DNA and a video and witnesses, you say, I was insane. I did it, but I didn't know what I was doing. That's how that shakes out. Look, I know this guy has problems.

I know that. But it is not insanity under the legal sense of the word. This was premeditated. I mean, Ashley, did you know he specifically went to multiple floors, multiple levels, as if he were targeting specific people? That's not crazy. That's crazy like a fox. That's right. And the way that you can prove that it was premeditated in this specific case is look at all of his social media posts and the specific details about him planning this crime

and telling everybody, this is what I'm going to do. And there's a picture with multiple guns in it that he had. There's one of him holding in his hand a gun and all the details that he dribbled along the way to say, this is exactly what I'm going to do. And I'm going to be a professional school shooter. The other thing I want to add, and it's what bothers me, I have seen, I was appointed by the governor as an oversight agency for abuse and neglect cases. And here's what I would see over and over and over again. When somebody rolls up to report or to investigate on a report and they see a nice house, as you've described, well manicured, socioeconomic doesn't appear to be an issue because the parents have worked their butts off to provide for children. Guess what? Those reports are not taken as seriously because of that. And that's sad,

but true. And so in this case, there've been, what did you say? 39 responses responding to law enforcement having to go to that house. When they roll up on a house like that, I do not believe they're going to take it as seriously as they should. And I know it doesn't mean there's not a problem when you roll up to a house like that, as you're describing it. But it also means that you, I guess, instinctively think, well, if they care enough about their home and their lawn and all that, then they should be caring about the children but the thing is this was not internally generated such as attacks on the mom these were him harassing neighbors elderly neighbors all sorts of neighbors i don't know what else he did but 39 reports

ashley wilcott with me back to david Katz, CEO of Global Security Group, an active shooter response expert, former DEA. David, you know, I know you don't always have somebody to blame. There's not always an answer, okay? But I'm looking for the answer. I'm searching for the answer as to why. Why am I doing that? I don't know. Maybe it's because if I know the answer, somehow it won't happen again. We can stop it from happening again if we understand why. But here, there's so many things, David. 39 police reports, no arrest ever.

Kicked out of two schools, expelled from this school, starting fights at school, online threatening to be a school shooter reported to the FBI. I mean, this morning, David, I swear I would be out of my skin if I were one of those parents. And my child is dead at school in the floor in a pool of blood and the FBI knew about it six months ago there is there is no way to look at this case and say anything other than there was lapse at every single juncture. I mean, this is a kid where school officials said, okay, you can't bring a backpack onto school grounds because we think you're going to carry firearms.

And there's no police follow-up? My God, that's going to shake out as to what happened, and what was not done, and what apparently was the reason that he wasn't called and prosecuted. But on the procedural level, too, one of your other guests, forgive me, I missed the name, mentioned the pulling of the fire alarm. One thing that, I mean, New York for the last 50 years, thing that is written in stone, you do not evacuate upon alarm. The alarm is meant to alert somebody, some central person who's going to run the emergency.

They're going to make a determination. If it isn't, maybe it's a false alarm, maybe it's a founded alarm, but they're going to direct you. The fact that you see this all over the country, people are still trained. You hear that alarm, you go. That's why he was able to pull that alarm.

He knew the procedures in that school. He knew the kids would hear the alarm, empty the rooms, go hear that alarm, you go. That's why he was able to pull that alarm. He knew the procedures in that school. He knew the kids would hear the alarm, empty the rooms, go into the hallway. And that's one reason why he was able to engage and kill so many people. But you can go through every single aspect, whether it was the warning signs, the failure of law enforcement, the failure of the school to have access control, the failure of the school to properly train these students and how to respond to these incidents. This is the textbook, how to do every single thing wrong, and we see the result. I mean, how could the FBI fix themselves? Rob Hessel, author of Safe City, From Law Enforcement to Neighborhood Watches, how could they say we couldn't identify him?

What? There's his picture, his face, and his real name. Hello. Of course they could identify him. Yeah, I don't know how the FBI could say they couldn't identify him. And even further, and kind of piggybacking off what David just said, there have been so many advances in technology in four-foot schools. I think this brings up the conversation about open campuses and the security on the schools. There's so many different technologies that can be deployed

to help recognize threats, facial recognition software, and then to the point of pulling a fire alarm and having people evacuated, there are systems out there that have been created to override a fire alarm system and communicate to the teachers and to the students in real time the actions that they need to take to keep themselves safe. So I think we've got a lot of things that we need to look at from how we're responding to different threats inside of the school systems. And I think, as you just said, there's going to be some definite fallout about how this kid was able to go under the radar after he'd been reported so many different times. Take a listen to Drew Griffin, CNN, describing the warning signs about Nicholas Cruz. The warning signs were all there in person and on social media, photos of guns, knives, extremist comments posted under political videos. I want to shoot people with my AR-15. That quote attached to a YouTube video of a

Donald Trump supporter being pushed around at a rally. Under a video about Antifa, he posted, F Antifa, I wish to kill as many as I can and I'm going to kill them in the future. And the comment that prompted a call to the FBI. He wrote, I'm going to be a professional school shooter. Ben Benight contacted the FBI when he saw that post. They came out to my office the very next morning in person and met with me. And those who knew the shooter said his life was filled with trouble. This video from a neighbor shows him brandishing what looks like a pellet gun. He was expelled from school, obsessed with guns, and when his adopted mother died in November, he ended up with no place to live.

The family of a friend took him in. Their lawyer said he didn't get up as usual yesterday, but they had no idea what was about to happen to john limley crime stories investigative reporter joining us john i was watching the court proceeding for his first appearance what exactly was the purpose of him being in court in the last hours and what did you observe john limley in his first court appearance yesterday, facing 17 counts of premeditated murder, Cruz mostly looked down at his hands and just answered in a low voice to the questions that the judge asked him. His attorneys did not specifically say that he had confessed to the shooting, nor did they explicitly deny his involvement, describing him as a broken young man.

Investigators already have interviewed more than 2,000 people as a part of the probe and hope to speak to unnamed others who might enlighten them to exactly what happened. There are new details emerging about Cruz's movements on Wednesday. These from court documents and even what we're hearing from police officials. Cruz took an Uber vehicle to the school. Police have said that he was wearing a black backpack and carrying a black duffel bag. A staffer at the school actually recognized Cruz and radioed a co-worker to say that Cruz was walking toward what is known as the freshman building on the campus. Within a minute, gunshots were heard and a code red was announced as an emergency, police say Cruz began firing into a series of rooms on the second floor, returning, actually going back to two of those to pump more rounds

at these huddled, terrified teachers and students. Cruz then went up the stairs, allegedly firing at another room as he traveled through the school building. Then, as students began to flee, police say Cruz dumped his rifle and a bag of extra ammunition and joined the others, trying to blend in as everyone ran from this building on campus. Back to you, David Katz, CEO of Global Security Group. What does that mean to you, David? Well, there's a lot of things that we just mentioned, too. One of the things, going back to the same room multiple times,

that happened to Virginia Tech, so that's not uncommon. A bunch of things that stand out. Number one, as a former student, he knew how to gain access to the building. Number two, he knew that by pulling the fire alarm, he knew how to gain access to the building number two he knew that by pulling the fire alarm he knew exactly the response number three he knew that there there is a a protocol in place that probably he was able to exploit because of his knowledge of the procedures and able to and able to gain access to potential victims before they could react. You know, there's a bunch of things that, I mean, here in New York City, for example,

the NYPD, the fire department, they've mandated active shooter response in high-rise buildings, in public assembly venues and hotels. In addition, there are school mandates. And everything that we teach, every bit of the curriculum is exactly diametrically opposed to what was done in this case. So, I mean, I mean, if you look at all the details as they emerge, you're going to find for some inexplicable reason, none of the recommended protocols are being followed. And I just I just this second, I saw an update that got Israel, the sheriff down there is calling for tougher, tougher gun control laws. My God, the guy had 39 encounters with police that we know of probably far more than that. And all the history of the school and more tougher gun control laws, do your job, make a case,

lock the kid up. If he had a felony conviction, he doesn't buy the gun, this doesn't happen. Or at least if he does buy a gun, it's much more difficult than simply walking into a store and plunking down his credit card. I want you to take a listen to what a neighbor, Rhonda Roxborough, tells CNN about Cruz's behavior. Listen. The first time I had any run-ins with him was in about 2012. And he actually slammed his backpack into my car door, which, you know, I got out and approached him and asked him, you know, why did he do that? Why did he, you know, try to damage the car? He wouldn't look at me. He was giggling. And so, you know, a mischievous boy. Did he have? So I confronted him directly. You confronted him on the street? Yes.

Yes, I did. And I'll tell you, the, he didn't want to answer anything. He had a very cold stare. He couldn't care less. Did he have other interactions like this with other neighbors, other kids in the neighborhood? He did. He did. He got in several fights with kids throughout the neighborhood. One, he bit his ear and injured him, his ear. Another kid's ear. Also, yes, yes, he got in a fight with several kids in the neighborhood.

And I didn't physically see that, but I heard about it. But also, I did see him with a pellet gun. And there was, you know, there were squirrels that he was shooting, killing. There was cats that were missing in the neighborhood as well. There was suspicion that he had killed the cats, these animals? Yeah, this is what, you know, this was floating around the neighborhood. I can't confirm that. I did not see that, you know, but I know that I saw him with a pellet gun and, you know, there were animals that were dead throughout the neighborhood. To Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism in San Bernardino.

Brian, we are hearing about the way many neighbors called police about animal cruelty, about he would attack neighbors, harass neighbors, yet never, as David Katz and John Lindley have pointed out, was there an arrest. I know you deal with specific groups regarding hate and extremism, but these repeated acts of hatred, are you surprised at what you were hearing from the neighbors? You just heard a neighbor speaking out and that a hate group would claim him as their own. Well, let's bifurcate this and approach the first one. There are many instances where young people get into fights and also harass animals. But to get to this level of this number of times, that animals have been killed. Even though in many instances children either get treatment or they outgrow some of these things, clearly this is someone who had some profound type of behavioral

disorder. Possibly going into something worse, I'm not a diagnostician but bottom line is you don't have thought that they were just plain out mean and evil I mean every time that someone does an evil act that does not mean that they have a mental defect or they are mentally ill if you look at serial and spree killers throughout history you will see that many of them started as youth, torturing, dismembering, and killing animals, just like this guy. Absolutely. The only thing is, a dear friend of mine, Jack Levin, no relation, one time told me, when I said the same thing, this was many years ago ago when we both were younger, but I look older, you don't, which is we'll do that for another time. thing is, many more people have done similar things and have not advanced with their violent

behavior. So it's one of those things where it's both over-inclusive and under-inclusive. In other words, we see this kind of behavior with respect to many who go into violence, but we also see for many, particularly when it's not as egregious as we've seen in this case. I know you're making a point. What would it be? The point would be that there should have been follow-up. Well said.

To John Limley, I'm reading about all the acts of heroism. One coach dies trying to save other people. One math teacher, a Ms. Shanti Viswanathan, known as Ms. V, to her students, when she heard a second fire alarm that day, she knew something was wrong. They had had a fire drill earlier that morning. Instead of letting her students out of algebra, she made them all get down on the floor in the corner of the room, put paper over the windows so nobody could see in and see the students hiding. And she wouldn't even let the SWAT team in, John.

They had to come in through the windows because she would not let them in. She didn't know for sure it was a SWAT team for real John exactly and another teacher uh Scott Beigel a geography teacher was killed as he was trying to usher students back into his classroom when the shooting broke out one of the students told CNN that he was shot outside the classroom door right after he locked all of the students in. It's stories like this that make all of this all the more heartbreaking. One detail that has emerged in just the past several hours is one about Mr. Cruz at home that morning, Wednesday morning. On most average weekday mornings, he had been going back to classes since he had been expelled to maybe get his GED.

And he usually got up to catch a ride to the adult education courses that the family he had stayed with after his mother's death last year had encouraged him to attend. Mr. Lewis, this is the family's lawyer, Jim Lewis, said that Mr. Cruz explained his reluctance that morning to get up by saying something to the effect of, it's Valentine's Day. I don't go to school on Valentine's Day. He had been staying with the Sneed family since November, the month of his mother's death. Mr. Lewis, the attorney, said that the family had seen signs of depression in Mr. Cruz, but nothing indicated that he was capable of this kind of violence. An interesting note, a chilling note, the family had allowed Nicholas Cruz to bring his gun with him to their house, insisting that he keep it in a lockbox. We also are hearing from a mom who reveals her daughter, a basketball player, is one of the two survivors in critical condition right now.

She says gunshots went through her back, crushing her ribs and exiting her stomach. It's Maddie Wilford, a high school junior. She was hit multiple times in the attack. Her mom, Missy, posted a status of her daughter's condition, urging people to pray for Maddie. And God knows we are praying for the Lord to comfort these families and heal the children that are sick and in the hospital and hurting now, both their bodies, their minds, and their souls. Karen Stark, New York psychologist, joining us.

I keep thinking about the bodies of their friends lying in the floor, dead, in pools of blood, and the children running out and stepping over and around the bodies. You know they're going to remember that the rest of their life. Just like you are, Nancy, just like I am and all of us here today, those images never leave, and they will need a lot of help to be able to cope with the fact that that trauma has been so violent and vivid. Everyone will need a lot of counseling

and support with this, particularly since it was so apparent that this was a boy who wanted violence, who he sought it. He let people know that he wanted to bring a gun to school. There was nothing mysterious about what was on his mind. This one girl that lived, Maddie, is right now in her third surgery, getting a permanent titanium plate put in her body to hold her ribs together. This young basketball star had a bullet run down the full length of her right arm

as horrible as it sounds she's alive joseph scott morgan do you believe joe scott that these students were killed instantly or were they conscious as they bled out on the floor as all of their friends classmates classmates, people they didn't know jumped over and around them to get out? No, they were not killed instantly. I'm sure that some of them probably were, but not every single one of them. This is not TV. It doesn't happen like that. This is a long, languishing death in many cases, particularly where people are shot in the abdomen. They do bleed out. You have a long period of time trying to clear the building. People are terrified. That goes back to the chaos in this circumstance. But I want to take you back somewhere else, Nancy. I was just thinking about the Broward County Medical Examiner's Office.

And when those people walked in that worked there that day, there yesterday, there was, there would be a long line of body bags containing bodies. And each one of those people have a name and each one of those people have been traumatized. And one of the things that's done at the medical examiner's office is that toxicology is taken on each and every person when an autopsy is performed and every one of these people were autopsied they're homicide victims you know who i want to see toxicology on i want to see toxicology on cruise that's what i want to see i want to know what poisons were in his system because there is a consistent thread that is running through all of these shootings. Going back to Klebold and Harris, things that I won't mention brand names, but medications that these people are on. And they're not being maintained when they take these medications.

They're just kind of handed out like candy. And they're ripping a lot of these people's brains to shreds. It's not an excuse for what he did because he's obviously planned this out. But I guarantee you, people want to pass out blame for these events i i see a i see a lot of blood on the hands of uh people in um in the medical community that are passing this out another thing i want to uh figure out to uh we have such a great panel of experts rob hessel you talk you specialize in hardening targets this school didn't have the doors locked. It was a quote open campus to my understanding.

If I'm wrong, John, let me jump in. But I mean, true. It was an open campus. Locked down school where they lock the doors. And that's the way I like it. It's locked. This open, any, any idiot can walk in. All the teachers saw the guy walking in. Rob Hessel?

Yeah, I think it definitely raises the conversation about an open campus environment. I mean, in my office, which is a commercial business, 24 hours a day, you cannot just walk into my office during business hours. It's a locked office environment so that we can identify who's trying to enter our building to keep our employees safe so for a campus to be an open environment I think we really need to take a look at that I think our campuses need to be locked down and the faculty safe we lock our homes at night if we've got half a brain why don't you lock your children in during the day to Rob Hessel, Brian Levin, and David Katz, another issue. To you, David Katz, why is everyone now making a big deal about the hat he was wearing,

a Make America Great hat? Am I missing something? What is the significance of him wearing that hat when he was target practicing in the backyard? That's just another, you know, remember, I think there was a knee-jerk political response on both sides. Initially, there were reports that he was a dreamer because of the last name Cruz, and they kicked him, other people kicked back, he was a white supremacist. I hear you. Everybody's looking for somebody to lash out at. In my mind, there's so many red flags the school knew the teacher saw walk in the FBI knew there were 39 arrest reports I mean what more could he

do beside take out a billboard on Park Avenue saying I'm going to shoot up my school what I mean what else could he do? You're exactly right. And we always, I mean, how many times do you hear, see something, say something, report it, get involved? Well, they did. And no action was taken. I mean, you can't, it is incomprehensible to me that with all these signs, this guy, this guy was not, was not in the system. And now looking back, I think if I had a guess,

no one in the FBI wrote a report on it. And that's why later on, now they're kind of trying to backtrack and make the phone call to the person who initially made that complaining call to the FBI and talk to that person. Because I think there was no action and that's and that's going to be a problem for them this is not just a story this is not just fuel for the 24-hour cable shows and the radio and the print this is real listen to this mother Lori Lori Alhadeff. My daughter, Alyssa Alhadeff, was a beautiful young lady. Yesterday on Valentine's Day, I dropped her off at school and I said, I love you.

And then a few hours later, I get a call that there's a shooter at Stoneman Douglas High School. And I ran as fast as I could to get there. And I knew at that point she was gone. I felt it in my heart. How? How do we allow a gunman to come into our children's school? How do they get through security? What security is there? There's no metal detectors. The gunman, a crazy person, just walks right into the school, knocks down the window of my child's door and starts shooting, shooting her and killing her. Nancy Grace, Crime Stories, signing off.

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