Skip to main content
Search
Services


 

Return to Transcripts main page

NANCY GRACE

Breaking News in Missing Woman`s Case

Aired February 21, 2006 - 20:00:00   ET

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


NANCY GRACE, HOST: Tonight, breaking news in the mystery surrounding the disappearance of 26-year-old Sueann Ray. Law enforcement, hundreds of volunteers engaged in searches by foot, by horse, by helicopter, even using tracking dogs. Months later, Sueann`s body discovered in a shallow grave. And tonight, who lands behind bars? Her father-in-law.
And also tonight, Enron has turned into a dirty word. You know, the fat cats with their hands down your pocket? We go live for the latest. And tonight, we`ll be taking your calls.

Good evening, everybody. I`m Nancy Grace. I want to thank you for being with us tonight. Tonight, millions feel the pain -- power outages across the Southwest, entire retirements decimated, life`s savings gone. Tonight, Enron top brass finally stands trial in Houston.

But first tonight, breaking news out of Georgia in the Sueann Ray murder mystery. Sueann`s father-in-law, Harold Danny Ray, lands behind bars tonight in connection with 26-year-old Sueann Ray`s death. Missing five months, Ray`s body finally uncovered in a shallow grave just two weeks ago.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DANNY JENKINS, SUEANN RAY`S FATHER: Well, I`ve learned that the dogs tracked my daughter all the way from his house to his parents` house. His parents did not let them on the property. If you`re innocent and you`ve got nothing to hide, I would welcome them -- welcome them in.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We believe she was killed in Pickens County, at the home of Quinton Ray.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They told me that Quinton had been arrested and that they believed that they had found Sueann`s body.

JENKINS: (INAUDIBLE) you know, if they hadn`t have found her, then I would have still held just a glimmer of hope that she would be alive.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It`s been horrible. It`s been a nightmare. It`s like -- it`s a bad dream, and you just don`t wake up.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: She was just a delight to be around, a great mother. She didn`t deserve what she got.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GRACE: Straight to Don Plummer, reporter with "The Atlanta Journal- Constitution." Now, listen, Don, I hate to pre-judge a case -- you know I`d never do a thing like that -- but I always thought the state`s chief suspect would be the husband. But the father-in-law? Help me out with this one.

DON PLUMMER, "ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION": Well, investigators tell me they could have arrested the husband, Quinton Ray, a number of weeks ago, perhaps even months ago, but they were waiting on the location of the body. And they were afraid if they arrested him too quickly, he would never give up that information.

So I believe that, originally, they were looking at the entire family. They knew that they had made a number of cell phone calls almost immediately after the time that Quinton Ray said that his estranged wife left there. And so the family was always in the crosshairs. They never helped with the investigation. They never helped with the searches. They wouldn`t let people search their property. They obviously drew attention to themselves because of all those things.

GRACE: Well, it was a dead giveaway when someone`s own family, the grandparents of her baby girl, refused to allow police to come on their property. Remember this, Don Plummer? Roll it, Liz.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GRACE: Danny, why won`t the in-laws open up the home for the police?

JENKINS: Nancy, I have no idea. If you`re innocent and you`ve got nothing to hide, I would welcome them in. I don`t know. I don`t understand.

GRACE: Why won`t the in-laws allow police to search the home?

JENKINS: I wished I knew. I don`t know. I don`t know.

GRACE: Yes. Have you talked to them.

JENKINS: No. No. No. And another thing, the lady said a while ago that Sueann frequented (INAUDIBLE) -- she didn`t allow Charity to go there very much at all.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GRACE: A formal indictment has been handed down. Miss Ellie (ph), do you have the indictment on you?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I do.

GRACE: Straight back to Don Plummer while Ellie hands me that. Thanks, dear.

Don, let`s go through the indictment. You know, you can glean so much information about what the state has and what it doesn`t have by carefully reading this indictment.

Thank you, Ellie.

First of all, everybody, on an indictment, you actually see the names of the grand jurors, the secret grand jurors. They`re not secret. They`re listed on the indictment, the citizens of Pickens County that heard this and handed down a multi-count indictment, as you know by now, the father- in-law of Sueann Ray landing behind bars in connection with her murder and disposal of her body. This is a multi-count indictment. It`s got seven counts.

And Don, what have you learned from it?

PLUMMER: Well, it was pretty obvious that they were looking at who it was that helped out. It`s one thing to kill someone, but then you`ve got to do a lot of cleaning up. You`ve got to do disposal of the body. You`ve got to somehow get rid of her car.

It`s 15 miles from Quinton Ray`s house to the Wal-Mart where the car was found. Someone had to pick him up. There`s a surveillance videotape from that camera in that parking lot. Did they, in fact, see Harold Ray there? Did they see anybody that might have been helping him?

Those are the kind of things they were looking at. You do see in here, though, they`re charging in the indictment that Harold Danny Ray helped his son move the body, helped him bury the body, helped him dispose of the car. So they are charging those things, and they have to have a basis for that, something.

GRACE: Well, taking a look at this indictment, I learned that the date of the actual murder was February 26. I also learned that the murder took place in the home of Quinton Ray. It clearly tells me that the father is being accused of moving -- helping to move her body from the home of the husband to its burial area in another county, Cherokee County.

Elizabeth, do you have a map of that?

Also, we learn that the prosecutors are accusing the father of helping him leave her van at Wal-Mart parking lot, and then, basically, picking him up after a hard day of shopping at Wal-Mart and taking him away from the Wal-Mart. So we learn a lot about the time, and we also learn the concealment of her body may not have happened the day of her murder. The prosecution specifically alleges in count five that her body was hidden in another jurisdiction sometime between August 26, the day of her murder, and Feb 8, 2006.

Joining me now, a very special guest. Sueann Ray`s father is with us, Danny Jenkins. Danny, thank you for being with us.

JENKINS: Thank you for having me, Nancy.

GRACE: Are you stunned?

JENKINS: No.

GRACE: Explain.

JENKINS: I knew it all along, Nancy. When -- when you know it, you know it.

GRACE: How did you know so quickly? And I`ve got to say, you did. You and I discussed it off camera many times.

JENKINS: I guess when I got up to Canton (ph) on the 29th and we -- we saw her van backed in, I knew right then that Quinton probably had something to do with it.

GRACE: But why?

JENKINS: I just -- I don`t know, Nancy, you just know. I just know it in my heart. Maybe Sueann told me. I don`t know. But I don`t think all the arrests have been made yet.

GRACE: You know, that leads me to another point. Don Plummer, I think that Sueann`s father is correct, not ruling out additional arrests. Is there a possibility Mommy did some laundry? Did Mommy wash some dirty, bloody clothes? Ooh-ooh!

PLUMMER: There`s actually a good possibility. I did question the district attorney on that point yesterday, and he refused to say that there would not be additional arrests, which I think indicates that they`re still investigating others, perhaps the family, perhaps even others, friends, and there may be more arrests.

GRACE: And quickly, I want to go to Pat Brown, criminal profiler. Pat is a very high-profile criminal profiler joining us tonight out of Minneapolis. It`s not just saying, Did the mother possibly wash dirty, bloody clothes? We know, also Pat, that just before these arrests went down, the brother was thrown behind bars on probation violation. Now, that`s quite the coinky-dink. He shows up behind bars, and within a week, these charges come down. Do you think they leaned on him and got evidence?

PAT BROWN, CRIMINAL PROFILER: Well, it`s very possible, Nancy. Unfortunately, you know, when you share these things with your family and part of your family is kind of the criminal sort, you don`t know whether they`re going to sell you out because they want a deal. We`re talking about a lot of people with a lot of bad behavior, and when one person with bad behavior trusts another person with bad behavior, sometimes it`s the wrong move to make.

GRACE: You know, it`s Trial 101, Ray Giudice, party to a crime. From what I`m hearing, there`s almost no way this family`s going to get around being charged party to a crime. Explain.

RAY GIUDICE, DEFENSE ATTORNEY: Well, Nancy, you may have two different aspects to that. You may have a conspiracy to commit murder, and then you may have a cover-up and a conspiracy after the murder was done, to clean up the body, move the body, bury the body, and then, obviously, as you alluded to, conceal and destroy evidence inside the scene of the crime. And if there was two places where the body was moved to, then you`ve got yet another effort by probably more than one person. If you`ve never moved a dead body -- I haven`t -- but it`s not -- it`s not going to be an easy thing. And...

GRACE: Oh, no! Wait a minute, Ray, have you heard about where the body was moved? This is not just moving it across county lines, OK.

GIUDICE: Right.

GRACE: Sueann Ray`s body -- and Elizabeth, could you show us a picture of Sueann Ray, a mother of a beautiful little girl. This woman was killed and then taken, apparently, out of Quinton Ray`s home by car and then dragged off the highway, up a hill, down a hill, and then buried off in the woods. This was no easy process.

GIUDICE: Certainly not. And I hate to be so matter-of-fact about this with her father here on the show. I know this is very painful for him. But to move a body of any size that distance up a hill, you`re going to have to have probably two pretty strong people. You`ve got to dig a hole. You`ve got to cover it up. You`ve got people who maybe went and bought materials to cover the body or -- and then -- so as Don was saying, you`re going to leave an electronic trail of purchases, cell phone receipts, video, if they stopped at a gas station. So I think the state`s probably got a lot more evidence than they`ve let on.

GRACE: To Dr. Lawrence Kobilinsky, a forensic scientist. Do I have to say Scott Peterson? I mean, the guy went out and made homemade cement weights to weigh the body down? I wonder what`s going to turn up in the Quinton Ray case.

LARRY KOBILINSKY, FORENSIC SCIENTIST: I don`t know, Nancy. I think we need to find out not just the manner of death, which we know is homicide, but the cause of death. And the only way to do that is through an autopsy. And the problem is that, you know, after five months, I would expect the body to be totally skeletonized. So unless there was a bludgeoning or a shooting, where the...

GRACE: Explain why.

KOBILINSKY: ... evidence is in bone, maybe tool marks, a knife, you see, a tool mark in bone -- I mean, then the medical examiner can come up with a reasonable cause of death. But it`s quite possible that you will not find a cause of death because what you`ve got, unfortunately, is a skeleton.

GRACE: Take a listen to what Quinton Ray had to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

QUINTON RAY, CHARGED IN WIFE SUEANN`S MURDER: ... one of the few that still do believe she`s still alive, but as the days pass on, I don`t know. We wasn`t together, you know, a lot. She had her own living, her own life and doing her own stuff. I don`t know what went on.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: During the undercover phase of the investigation, we were able to develop information which led us to that site this morning. We believe she was killed in Pickens County, at the home of Quinton on Ray.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GRACE: Straight out to Doug Burns, veteran trial lawyer. Doug, don`t you just hate it as a defense attorney when you take that big, fat retainer, and then ruh-roh (ph), you find out your client has been on the airwaves gabbing about his case?

DOUG BURNS, DEFENSE ATTORNEY: No question about it. That`s a very good point and...

GRACE: Ouch.

BURNS: ... you know what, Nancy? If you look at the demeanor of his face and the eyes shifting back and forth, it`s very difficult. One other point, back to what Ray said, and it was a good analysis. There`s a distinction, though, between conspiracy to murder versus accessory after the fact. That`s the term everybody`s forgetting. And an accessory during a crime may have more liability than after. So the father`s a little bit different. But as you just said, he did run his mouth. I agree.

GRACE: Well, to Don Plummer, let`s go through the indictment. What exactly do we have the father charged with.

PLUMMER: Well, he`s charged with concealing a crime. He`s charged with hindering apprehension of a felon. And he`s also charged with attempting to, if you will, assist afterwards. So there are three...

GRACE: Helping to bury a dead body.

PLUMMER: Right, three charges.

GRACE: Helping to conceal. So Doug, it`s getting pretty deep, I mean, when you ask somebody to help bury a dead body and drag it across a field in the middle of the night?

BURNS: Yes, but all I`m saying, Nancy, is that there`s a distinction...

GRACE: It`s not like he just did a load of laundry.

BURNS: Right. Understood. But he didn`t participate in the murder, is all I`m saying. So there`s going to be a distinction in the criminal exposure and liability between the son and father. The son, if, by all accounts, it plays out the way it looks, is going to be facing a very difficult uphill battle with respect to the murder charge. The father -- I`ll tell you what. How about the possibility of the father being asked to testify against his son? I mean, federally, in the Justice Departments, there`s a policy against it, unless in the most serious circumstances. But who knows, that could happen. Imagine that?

GRACE: To Danny Jenkins. This is Sueann Ray`s father. Danny, you know these people. Do you think that there are going to be more arrests? I mean, the brother was already behind bars on a probation violation. The father`s landed behind bars now. Quinton Ray is behind bars, after all of his cocky talk on air. Do you think there are going to be more arrests regarding the murder of your girl and the burial of her body?

JENKINS: Yes, I do. I believe it with all my heart.

GRACE: I`ve got a feeling you`re right. If the district attorney wouldn`t rule it out, that means it`s in. OK, yes/no, Danny. Do you think any of them will roll over on the other?

JENKINS: I don`t know that, Nancy. I don`t know. I hope they do the right thing. They haven`t done it in 177 days, so maybe they`ll do it now.

GRACE: The eternal optimist. Joining us, our special guest, Danny Jenkins. This is Sueann Ray`s father.

Very quickly, to tonight`s "Case Alert." A 16-year-old Delaware girl, Carmai Williams, now missing two weeks. Her mom believes Carmai could be with an adult male who posed as a teenager on line. According to National Center Missing Children, one in five children on line is sexually solicited. We want to bring Carmai home. If you have info, call 302-324- 1971.

And tonight, let`s don`t forget 24-year-old Jennifer Kesse, missing from Florida since January 24. Today, police name a person of interest based on surveillance video outside Kesse`s apartment, the person of interest between 5-3 and 5-5, but still no discernible weight or gender. We also learned tonight police say someone other than Kesse made off with her car, recovered nearby.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Based on the information that the FBI was given and those images, they believe that our person of interest is somewhere between 5-foot-3 and 5-foot-5 inches tall. They are not able to ascertain his -- his or her weight or ascertain his or her shoe size. We are still not specifying a gender because the information on the photographs are not specific enough.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GRACE: If you can help, call 800-423-TIPS. There`s a $115,000 reward in Kesse`s case.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JENKINS: Well, I`ve learned that the dogs tracked my daughter all the way from his house to his parents` house. His parents did not let them on the property. And you know, I guess, if you -- if you don`t got nothing to hide and you didn`t do this to my daughter, you would let people on that property.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GRACE: Tonight, the plot thickens in the disappearance and death of a 26-year-old Georgia woman, Sueann Ray, a real home-grown beauty, beautiful on the inside and the outside, the mother of a little girl. An intense manhunt yielded nothing. Now her estranged husband behind bars. Tonight, her father-in-law behind bars. Already, brother-in-law behind bars. Is there a family connection? Will there be more arrests? We already know that this girl`s funeral, scheduled for last week, had to be postponed, her body not released to the family until Friday, her family now having an independent autopsy.

Joining us tonight, her father, Danny Jenkins. Danny, why an independent autopsy?

JENKINS: I just think I had to know in my heart what really happened, with 170 days passing, and I just needed to know.

GRACE: And what did you learn from the independent autopsy?

JENKINS: I`ve only talked to John Cie (ph) for just a few moments, and he was telling me about the autopsy, and I got sick and I didn`t want to hear no more.

GRACE: You know what is making me sick right now? Imagining her body buried off a shallow grave, off a dirt road in another county, where it`s a miracle it was ever found. It is a miracle. Danny, how did they finally find Sueann?

JENKINS: I think -- I`m not for sure, but I think Quinton drew a map, I think. I`m not for sure. They didn`t tell me all the details.

GRACE: To Dr. Patricia Saunders, clinical psychologist. There`s nothing like saying, I did it, than leading police to the body.

DR. PATRICIA SAUNDERS, CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGIST: If this guy has a conscience and if it was said out of guilt -- there was some report that it happened in an undercover situation, in which case, he was just tricked into confessing. This is a criminal family with a rotten history, and I wouldn`t give him too much credit for having a conscience, Nancy.

GRACE: Hey, I wasn`t giving him the credit. You were. You were the one saying he turned over a new leaf behind bars. But I`ll come back to you on that.

To tonight`s "Case Alert." The missing groom`s family reportedly is postponing a suit that will likely blame the cruise company for creating an atmosphere, gambling and drinking, that allegedly led to the newlywed`s disappearance. Twenty-six-year-old George Smith vanished from his honeymoon last July. Blood on the ship and in Smith`s own stateroom the morning he was discovered gone, but no sign of Smith.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: She was up getting her car worked on by her husband at his automobile shop in Jasper. That was the last place that she was seen.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GRACE: Breaking developments in the case of 26-year-old Sueann Ray. As you know, intense manhunt for this Georgia mother, 170 days passed until her body was discovered in a shallow grave. Tonight, behind bars not only her estranged husband, but her father-in-law and brother-in-law.

Straight back out to Danny Jenkins. This is Sueann Ray`s father. When did you learn that the father-in-law had been arrested?

JENKINS: It was about 2:30 yesterday afternoon. I had a call from a Fox reporter, and he said, Danny, tell me about the -- tell me what you think about the news. And I said, I don`t know nothing about it. And he told me about it.

GRACE: Where exactly was her body found, Danny?

JENKINS: I don`t know exactly, Nancy. I`m going up there tomorrow and try to find the location. It`s not too far from his parents` house, I can tell you that.

GRACE: But it`s across the county line.

JENKINS: Yes, ma`am, but his parents lived in that county that the body was found in.

GRACE: Oh, really?

JENKINS: Yes, ma`am.

GRACE: Oh, thanks, Elizabeth. There we go. We`ve got a map showing.

To Ray Giudice -- you know, Ray, the perpetrators may very well have thought they could throw off the prosecution by the location of the body, but a case can be prosecuted where the body`s found, not where the murder occurred.

JENKINS: That`s right. the -- both counties would have jurisdiction on this case. Either district attorney can take it. In fact, different crimes may have happened in different counties. The murder may have happened in one county and part of the concealment in the other county, where the body was buried.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The GBI called me at about 10 minutes after 9:00 this morning and asked me to come to Jasper. And they told me that Quinton had been arrested and that they`d believed that they had found Sueann`s body.

JENKINS: In one aspect, I`m glad it`s over with, but, in another aspect, I still wish, you know, they hadn`t have found her, and then I would still have just a glimmer of hope that she may be alive.

In one sense, it`s relief, but in another sense, it`s not. Now everybody knows she`s dead, not just me.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GRACE: Developing news tonight in the case of Sueann Ray, missing for nearly 200 days before her body was found, hidden in a shallow grave out in the middle of nowhere. Tonight, not only is her estranged husband behind bars, but so is her father-in law and brother-in law.

An indictment puts the father working with the son to hide the body, conceal evidence, and even plant the car, Sueann Ray`s van, there at a local Wal-Mart.

Tonight, we are taking your calls.

Joining me, Channing Ruskell. He`s a civil attorney for Sueann Ray`s dad, who is also with us tonight. Why a second autopsy, Channing?

CHANNING RUSKELL, ATTORNEY FOR SUEANN RAY`S FATHER: Well, as Danny explained, I think it was to put his mind at rest regarding the cause of death. And, of course, we have complete confidence in the GBI`s finding, but those aren`t readily available to us, so we wanted to go ahead and do the second autopsy just to...

GRACE: Who is your medical examiner that performed the independent autopsy?

RUSKELL: It was Dr. Burton.

GRACE: Ah, Joe Burton?

RUSKELL: Right.

GRACE: Right. I had him in court many, many times. And who performed the autopsy for the government?

RUSKELL: Well, it was the crime lab officials, but we haven`t seen a copy of the results yet.

(CROSSTALK)

GRACE: Ah, right, so you don`t know which doctor it was.

RUSKELL: That`s correct.

GRACE: Again, we are taking your calls. Let`s go out to Deandra in Topeka.

Hi, Deandra.

CALLER: Hi, how are you doing?

GRACE: I`m good. What`s your question?

CALLER: Ms. Grace, my big question about everything is, is when people come to the public authorities, and they want to know -- you know, they`re trying to find their children or their lost ones or their loved ones...

GRACE: Right.

CALLER: ... why does it take so long? Why does it take so long for them to be believed?

GRACE: You know what? That is an excellent question because I`m going to throw this to Sueann`s father.

Danny, Deandra has point. Last night, we did a story of three missing girls out of Florida. And do you know authorities at first wouldn`t start searching for them because they thought they had run off?

I don`t understand how, in these type cases, especially when women are missing, they`re treated as if they voluntarily have left their car by the road, with their pocketbook, and their cell phone, and their keys in it. I mean, your daughter, if she had left voluntarily, would have left behind her little girl, for Pete`s sake. Ridiculous.

JENKINS: It`s a crying shame that the authorities just don`t understand the grief that families go through when someone goes missing. And when you know in your heart that they`re gone and something bad has happened to them, you know, it`s hard. And they got mad at me for being on them, but, you know, I`m sorry.

GRACE: Well, you got me on them, too. So they`re mad at both of us.

JENKINS: Yes, ma`am. I`m a dad, and I have to do that for my daughter. I`m sorry.

GRACE: Well, to Pat Brown, criminal profiler, Pat, the time that is lost while authorities decide whether to treat it as a missing person, or a homicide, or someone that just went on a walkabout, in the first three hours when a child is gone there`s about 75 percent chance the child is killed in those three hours.

BROWN: Absolutely, Nancy. That is one of the biggest problems with these cases, that the first 24 hours -- the first hour even -- are so very important.

But on the other hand, police hear so many times people coming in saying, "Somebody`s gone missing," or, "This has happened," and it turns out to be not so.

And they`re so understaffed; this is one of the big problems. Citizens have to get behind giving more money to their police so the police can hire some staff to do some work, because they`re just tremendously overloaded. And they get very jaded and they say, "Ah, yes, you`re another one of them."

It`s a shame because, yes, it is absolutely detrimental to a case if anybody doesn`t jump on it right away and find that evidence or that person before it all goes missing.

GRACE: And to Don Plummer with the "AJC," "Atlanta Journal- Constitution," listen, Don, I`m glad they finally found Sueann and the case is heading to court. But the reality is we had to ride the GBI like a mule to get any results.

And I swear to you, Don, sometimes I wonder, if Quinton Ray hadn`t allegedly drawn a map himself to the remains, we would still be looking, Don.

PLUMMER: Well, it obviously was a multi-jurisdictional case from the very beginning, and it was quite a long time before the GBI was brought in. I think that may have hindered the whole investigation.

Her missing person report was filed in one jurisdiction. Her car was found in another. The murder occurred in a third. And in a fourth is where her body was found. So you had a city police department who was taking the report...

GRACE: Right.

PLUMMER: ... initially being the lead agency. That just didn`t work.

GRACE: Let`s go out to the calls. Cindy in Wellington, Florida. Hi, Cindy.

CALLER: Hi, Nancy. Thanks for taking my call.

GRACE: Thank you for calling.

CALLER: I just wanted to congratulation you, first of all, on your one-year anniversary of your show.

GRACE: Can you believe it?

CALLER: One of the best new shows that`s ever hit the airwaves.

GRACE: Thank you.

CALLER: And I want to thank you, also, for how much myself and my family have learned about law.

GRACE: Well, bless you. And, remember, you`re paying the bill, so you might as well know what`s going on in that courthouse.

What`s your question, dear?

CALLER: Well, my question is you report all these stories with such passion and such intelligence, and they seem to touch you because you, not only report the facts, but you report the personalization of each story. And how do you get over that when you get off the air?

GRACE: Well, unbeknownst to you, the viewer, my staff keeps about five boxes of this right beside the set hidden under the table. So I don`t distance myself.

And I think that for pretty much everyone on our staff tonight, both the prosecutors on the show, myself, the defense lawyers, everybody that works the case, our staff, people that don`t shed a tear one way or the other, in my mind, when they hear cases like this, they`re the ones with a problem, Cindy, not the ones who remain stoic. Thank you for calling.

Danny, when you hear people like that, does it make you feel any better at all to know how many people care about you and Sueann? And what about Sueann`s little girl? Who has her?

JENKINS: She`s with her -- and, yes, Nancy, it does make you feel a lot better knowing that people do care, and that people are out there, and that they really do care. But Charity is being well taken care of. She is with her godmother, and she will remain there until school is over.

GRACE: Do you expect some type of a custody battle with the Ray family? They wouldn`t dare. No, they would not.

Doug Burns, they wouldn`t, would they?

JENKINS: No, no, no.

BURNS: First of all, you`re going to have to let the criminal case sort itself out, but if it`s heading the way it looks like it`s heading, Nancy, I agree with you. No.

GRACE: I remember a guy who murdered his wife, tried to set it up like suicide, actually fought the severance of his parental rights, long after his conviction. I`ll never forget it. So I wouldn`t put anything, anything past this family.

Let`s go out to Betty in South Carolina. Hi, Betty.

CALLER: Hi, how are you, Nancy?

GRACE: I`m good, dear.

CALLER: I wanted to tell you. I thoroughly, thoroughly enjoy your show.

GRACE: Thank you.

CALLER: I don`t care where I`m at, I must be home in time to see NANCY GRACE.

GRACE: Thank you.

CALLER: I am a victim of a violent crime. My husband was a police officer, run over and killed in the line of duty. How do I go about trying to get the people in the state where I live to do a petition? I`ve contacted people about it, and they keep telling me, yes, they`ll get back to me, and I don`t get any answers.

GRACE: OK, I can tell you about that. And chime in, both Ray Giudice and Doug Burns.

To do a petition, if you want to change in the law, there is a statutory method. You`re calling from South Carolina. There`s a statutory method laid out.

You know who does it all the time? California. They are forever having referendums...

BURNS: Right.

GRACE: ... and ballot changes. The reality is every state has that capability.

Right, Doug?

BURNS: Yes. In other words, instead of having formal legislation passed in the legislature, you`re right absolutely. Get it on a local ballot, get it as a referendum, and get the law changed for the particular instance at hand. And that`s exactly right. That`s the way you would do it.

GRACE: I want to go straight back out to Danny Jenkins. This is Sueann Ray`s father.

You believe, I can tell by the way you`re talking tonight, that there will be other charges coming down. Regarding punishment, do you believe the state will seek the death penalty?

JENKINS: I believe that they should seek the death penalty on Quinton, yes.

GRACE: Well, I notice in the indictment that there are aggravating circumstances laid out, Ray Giudice, specifically kidnap and bodily harm done during kidnap.

GIUDICE: That`s right, Nancy. Those are two of the five mitigation - - or, I`m sorry, aggravating circumstances here in Georgia that you need for a capital punishment case.

I will say that I think the death penalty issue is going to be greatly decided by the autopsy results. If there is evidence of a bludgeoning, of damage to the body, I think that`s going to go a long way, because I predict that you`re going to hear a defense that sounds something along the lines of mutual combat. I believe there`s going to be a trial of...

GRACE: Mutual combat?

GIUDICE: Hold on. I believe there`s going to be evidence of prior domestic violence in this household, and I think that`s what the defendant`s going to come up with, is that there was some kind of fight, some kind of scuffle. She fell, she hit her head, et cetera, they panicked, and they hid the body.

I`m not saying that`s a winner, but, if you ask me to come up with a defense, that`s probably something I think you`re going to hear.

GRACE: Very quickly, Clark, what do you know about the lawyers?

CLARK GOLDBAND, NANCY GRACE INTERNET BLOGGER: Well, Nancy, it should be an interesting fight. Joe Hendricks, who is the D.A. down there in Pickens County, Georgia, says the investigation is ongoing. And he`s not ruling out more arrests. So we should be on the look out for that.

He`ll be taking on Richard Thurman, who`s the Pickens County public defender. We don`t know much about him. We placed calls to him all day, still hasn`t gotten back, but what we do know is he`s never seen a case like this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I recently lost my husband. I bought a new town home because he died in our family home, so I had to move from this family home and go somewhere else.

Finally closed on that, stayed there two weeks. The next week, I got locked out of 401(k). I lost all my money. I got my check for $109. That`s all I got.

Being laid off was bad enough, but being laid off and dumped like so much garbage, that was the clincher. That was the deal-breaker right there.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GRACE: The battle rages on in a court of law against those fat-cats who allegedly got their hands in your pocketbook, from everything to loss of pensions, to totally disseminated life savings, to a brown-out across the Southwest of energy. A prosecutor is blaming it all on Enron.

Let`s go to Tom Matthews, KGRH Radio reporter. He was in court today.

What happened today, Tom?

TOM MATTHEWS, KTRH RADIO REPORTER: Well, Nancy, basically today we heard from Paula Rieker, who is the former corporate secretary. She worked real closely with both Lay and Skilling, and she had some pretty damaging testimony for Lay and Skilling in court today.

GRACE: What specifically?

MATTHEWS: She was detailing, as Mark Koenig did -- Mark Koenig was the first government witness to take the stand...

GRACE: In a nutshell!

MATTHEWS: In a nutshell, basically she told the jury that there were earnings reports that were actually trumped up at the direction of Skilling and Lay in order to make earnings look better for the company.

GRACE: To Ali Velshi, CNN anchor, where does the case stand at this point? And what the most damning evidence so far?

ALI VELSHI, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, the damning evidence is Paula Rieker, who is the first person to have made a direct link between Ken Lay and fudging those earnings reports, those reports.

But we are entering the fourth week of what is to be a four-month trial. And the danger already, the judge has said it, he wants to see whatever smoking gun evidence anyone has, because this is -- it goes down to accounting, and earnings, and things like that, and that is going to bore any jury.

The fact of the matter is this the corporate trial of the century, Nancy. Some 4,000 Enron employees -- remember Arthur Andersen, 28,000 people their lost their jobs. Remember the billions in southern California and the Southwest? Those blackouts. I don`t know if anybody died from being in a blackout. There was at least one suicide as a result of this thing.

They have got to stay on the ball and make sure that this case is a story and it`s about people`s lives, because if they start making this is an accounting case, no one`s going to be able to pay attention to it.

GRACE: Joining me now, corporate and securities lawyer Russ Alba. Hold on, Russ, I think I hear the Enron defendants coming to court.

Right, yes, they`re headed straight for the trough. That`s right. If these allegations are true, Russ Alba, they were like pigs at the trough.

Elizabeth, do we have those stats on how much money these people were making? There you go. Ken Lay paid himself $67 million. Ouch. Skilling, $41.8 million. Gee, I hope they don`t sound that bad if they take the stand in their own defense.

Russ Alba, how can they get out of this jam?

RUSS ALBA, CORPORATE ATTORNEY: Nancy, they have to argue that...

GRACE: OK, Elizabeth, that`s enough. OK, thank you.

ALBA: ... with the exception of some certain transactions engineered by Jeffrey Fastow, the vast majority of Enron transactions were legitimate, business as usual.

GRACE: Oh, I`m sorry. I just choked.

ALBA: And particularly with respect to those Fastow-engineered transactions, that they had no knowledge nor participation in any of the financial wrongdoing or the misstatements.

GRACE: But wait a minute. Didn`t they tell employees -- wasn`t the policy was that they could not sell their Enron stock?

ALBA: Absolutely. They locked down the 401(k) so that Enron employees were forbidden, basically precluded from selling their stock during this period.

GRACE: Oh, so they knew, but they let loyal employees suffer and lose everything. With us tonight, Russ Alba, as well as Ali Velshi and Tom Matthews.

To Charles Prestwood, a former Enron employee, a victim of this collapse, Mr. Prestwood, thank you for being with us.

CHARLES PRESTWOOD, FORMER EMPLOYEE AND VICTIM OF ENRON: Thank you, ma`am. It`s an honor to be on your show.

GRACE: Sir, how long were you with Enron?

PRESTWOOD: Ma`am, I worked for them for 30 -- for Enron and the predecessor, it was 33 1/2 years.

GRACE: You remind me so much of my dad, 45 years with the Southern Railroad. And from what I understand, Mr. Prestwood, you lost all of your investments when this happened.

PRESTWOOD: Yes, ma`am, $1,310,507 and some few cents is what, when I retired on October the 1st of 2000, when I was 62 years old, that`s what I had in stock. And about a year later, it was worth $3,600.

GRACE: Mr. Prestwood, how are you getting by?

PRESTWOOD: Ma`am, I still get my little pension, my little monthly check, and I get my Social Security. And that`s it. The lifestyle that I`ve got now -- in other words, my lifestyle has turned 180 degrees, because, when I retired, I had great plans of maybe doing a little traveling, seeing a little bit of this whole beautiful USA. Now, I can`t even go to the county line, unless I`d make a loan.

GRACE: Mr. Prestwood, I hope you can join us again as we all watch the Enron trial...

PRESTWOOD: Yes, ma`am.

GRACE: ... and pray for justice.

PRESTWOOD: Yes, ma`am.

GRACE: Everyone, local news coming up for some of you, but we`ll all be right back.

And live coverage of the sentencing for a New Mexico teen convicted of killing his family, 3:00 to 5:00 Eastern, Court TV.

Please stay with us as we remember tonight U.S. Marine Corporal Matthew Conley, 21. He died, along with six others in Iraq, when a roadside bomb blew up his vehicle. His dad coached him little league. A little boy, his favorite subject history. Matthew Conley, a boy, who grew up to be a man, an American hero.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

GRACE: One year ago tonight, we brought our first legal story into your homes. So many stories of justice sought and achieved, so many stories of ongoing injustice. These legal cases, these people who touched our hearts and our minds.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I don`t know what they did, but they shouldn`t have done what they done to my husband. They shouldn`t have done that. He`s lost. He`s going to be greatly missed.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That`s my baby. I love her. If she had -- if he had left her at 2:00 in that car, she would have called. She would have called.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I think about her at night, you know, is she somewhere where it`s dry? Is she having something to eat, something to drink? I worry about, you know, her essentials. I`m very anxious to have her back home, but I`m not worried that we`ve not found her.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Michelle has the most beautiful smile, the most bubbly personality. And we just are asking anyone who has any information about the whereabouts of Michelle, look for her.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: She was always the first person to call me, and wake me up, and say, "Happy birthday." And she never -- she never called me.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I don`t care if I have to comb the whole Atlantic. I`m going to find my sister. I`m going to find my sister.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It`s been 19 years. And every year, you try. You do something, you know, to try to solve this case.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

GRACE: Thank you to all of my guests. But also, tonight, thank you to our bosses at CNN and Headline News, to my wonderful staff, Dean, Elizabeth, thank you.

But most important, to you, our friends around the country who are with us every night, from Tim in Pittsburgh, Linda in Menlo, M.J. Whitmore (ph), Arizona, thank you for inviting us and our stories into your home, but they`re your stories.

I`m Nancy Grace signing off. Good night, friend.

END

Search
© 2007 Cable News Network.
A Time Warner Company. All Rights Reserved.
Terms under which this service is provided to you.
Read our privacy guidelines. Contact us. Site Map.
Offsite Icon External sites open in new window; not endorsed by CNN.com
Pipeline Icon Pay service with live and archived video. Learn more
Radio News Icon Download audio news  |  RSS Feed Add RSS headlines