Human Interest
Cody McCasland, 7 years old, suffers from a gene mutation which caused deformities in his lower spine. He has no knee joints nor tibia. On prosthetics, he’s now living a happy and exciting life… giving back and charming everyone from Ellen to Oprah.
Watch the report here.
Here are links to organizations related to Cody:
Help Team Cody Give Back
Jeff Gordon Foundation
Challenged Athletes Foundation
By Josh Mankiewicz, Dateline Correspondent
The guy reminded me of my grandfather. Same western shirt, same cowboy boots, same Brylcreem in his hair. Except that I never saw my grandfather cry.
Now, this fellow wasn't blubbering, but he'd choke up every so often and a tear would form, which he'd dab away with some Kleenex wadded up in his fist. And I just sat there and did nothing. Normally, when someone starts crying in the middle of a conversation, your urge is to get out of your chair and put your arm around them, or at least tell them how sorry you are. But this was television, so I just soldiered on.
He was talking about his daughter, who'd been killed by her husband. And sadly, he was one of six straight interviews I'd done for Dateline in which the person sitting across from me was crying. We cover a lot of murder cases at Dateline, and in each case, the person I was interviewing was telling me about the worst thing that had ever happened to them; the sister, the best friend, the wife taken from them suddenly and through violence.
Television is pretty good at showcasing emotion, and there was a time when getting someone to cry on-camera was hugely desirable. "Did she squirt?" one high-profile TV doctor used to ask his producers after they returned from an interview. I suppose there are still people who seek out the tears, but I'm not one of them.
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By Dan Slepian, Dateline Producer
The email arrived on a Sunday morning, at 4:50 a.m.
I'm writing to you about a 25-year-old cold case from 1981 in which a woman named Barbara L. Winn was shot in the chest with a .38 Special after a violent fight.
A woman named Patty Bruce was writing about her sister-in-law, Barbara Winn, whose death in 1981 had been ruled a suicide.
The e-mail claimed Barbara had not killed herself, but that Barbara was murdered by her ex-boyfriend, Aaron "Bubbie" Foster. The e-mail revealed that Foster was currently a free man, working for the St. Paul Police Department.
We receive many e-mails alleging miscarriages of justice, but there was something about this one.
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By Vince Sturla, Dateline Producer
I was browsing through a bookstore a few years back when I glimpsed the head-stopping title "On Killing," by Lt. Col David Grossman. I thought, "What the … ?"
I picked it up and read the subtitle: "The Psychological Cost Of Killing In War And Society." The general point was that while killing is often presented as an almost casual act in action movies, more often than not, it’s a traumatic, life-transforming experience for a combat troop or police officer -- no matter how just the cause. It makes a great deal of sense, but it was something I hadn’t seriously considered before.
Several years later, I came across an academic paper by Lt. Col. Peter Kilner that came to the same conclusion as Grossman’s book. In his paper, Kilner cited a study done of Vietnam veterans that indicated the most severely traumatized were the ones who had killed. Few of us can read that and say, “Oh yeah. I know what they’re talking about.” The vast majority of us – fortunately – have no idea what it’s like to take another life. We have no idea of the conflicts that take place in the hearts and minds of combat veterans who killed in war. Most of us are incapable of offering any meaningful advice or words of comfort.
On the flip side, you have returning combat troops who are loathe to broach the subject of killing because they don’t want their families to know they’ve taken a life. That’s how we end up with, as Lt. Col Peter Kilner puts it, “The Elephant In The Room, no one is talking about.”
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By Cathy Singer, Dateline Producer
I’m thinking a lot about Myanmar these days. The cyclone that struck that country, also known as Burma, has been devastating. The images from the aftermath make me heartsick – and while I, like many people around the world, would have paid attention to this disaster because the death and destruction are so vast and shocking and sad, I am especially fixated and upset by the news because I was in Myanmar just a few months ago.
I went to Southeast Asia on a four-week journey with my sons in December and January and the last country we visited was Myanmar. I loved being in that country, a country that is largely closed to the world. The last time Myanmar was in the news was in August and September, when dissidents and monks led peaceful protests in the country, initially against the increase in the price of fuel, but which escalated to protest the military rulers’ oppressive control over the country, which has impoverished its people and crushed human rights (but not the human spirit). The government killed protesters, including monks, but it is unclear how many more died beyond the United Nations calculated death toll of 31. The junta also jailed hundreds – some say thousands - more to slap down and silence the rebellion.
But I’m not here to talk about politics in Myanmar. I want to share a bit of what we experienced there so that people will know a little more about the country than the headlines about a repressive government and now a natural disaster with suffering beyond comprehension. While most tourists cancelled their trips to this exotic Buddhist country in the months since the protests last fall, we decided to stick to our initial plans – and I am so glad we did. For a week we were allowed a peek into a country filled with gentle people, half who live as they have for generations in villages without electricity or indoor plumbing.
Our first stop was in the more or less modern city of Yangon, formally known as Rangoon. It’s the country’s largest city and former capital with a population of six million. I’m not sure what I expected of Yangon, but what we found was a lovely city with tall leafy trees, wide boulevards, lakes, colonial buildings and the gloriously gilded Shwedagon Pagoda, the most spectacular Buddhist temple we saw in the four countries we toured.
In the center of town, we walked through crowded open-air markets and past men enjoying late-afternoon socializing at outdoor cafes, most of whom wear what we would call skirts. The women also wear long skirts, although they are wrapped and tied slightly differently. Many women (and children) also spread “thanaka” on their faces, a yellowish-white paste made from wood which functions as both make-up and sunscreen, a practice that dates back more than 2,000 years.
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By Josh Mankiewicz, Dateline Correspondent
It's been a long road for Cindy Sommer. Her U.S. Marine husband died in February, 2002, and she just got out of jail last week after being convicted by a jury of his murder. Now here's the hitch: she's innocent. Officially.
Cops and prosecutors will tell you, somewhat derisively, that the jails and prisons are just full of innocent men and women, that everyone behind bars comes armed with a story about how they got jobbed by the system. I don't know how often that's true, but it's certainly true for Cindy Sommer.
Her husband dropped dead on the bedroom floor that awful night, and although Cindy tried to do CPR, Todd Sommer died at only 23. The official cause of death was a heart attack.
A year or so later, Naval investigators (NCIS) were about to close the case when they decided to send Todd's tissue samples to a lab for heavy-metals analysis. That lab test came back showing more than a thousand times the amount of arsenic in Todd Sommer's tissues than should have been there.
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By Hoda Kotb, NBC News
It still hurts. A year has passed and it still hurts. I keep paging through the newspapers and reading bits and pieces, stories of survivors a year later. My heart aches. I am a 1986 Virginia Tech graduate. It may have been 22 years since I graduated, but I feel so close to that campus. It’s my school.
I will never forget one year ago, those images, those frantic kids running across my campus, through my drill field, becoming my memories. I searched for people I knew—some teachers, Tri-Delta sorority sisters. I realized that even though I didn’t personally know the people who were killed, I did know them. They were brothers and sisters, sons and daughters, they wore maroon and orange and cheered for the Hokies. They were family.
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By Leonor Ayala, Dateline Field Producer
At 8:45 in the morning, I found myself zipping down a lonely, long stretch of road. State Road 62 in Florida wasn't much to look at in that hour, just lots of open space and farm land (of course this from my city girl's point of view). This led me to second guess myself. Was I going in the right direction?
My mind was racing. I was en route to my very first meeting with a first-degree murderer at Hardee Correctional Institution.
When I thought about stepping inside a prison for the first time, my anxiety wasn't for my personal safety. It wasn't about the pat-down everyone had warned me about, or being a few feet from a convicted killer. It was about getting to the prison on time.
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By Liz Brown, Dateline Producer
Carol Kent grew up the daughter of a preacher. Religion has always been her touchstone. That and her love of family. But this devoted Christian doesn't go to church on Sundays anymore.
Carol and her husband have a new Sunday ritual. They still put on their best clothes and pile into their car, minds filled with anticipation for what is ahead. When they arrive, they might chat with their fellow congregants, and nod to the staff as they take their places. But instead of a church, their new Sunday destination is a Florida prison. Their pews are plastic chairs, the congregants are visiting families, and the staff pack guns. Carol calls it the Church of the Razor Wire.
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By Elizabeth Shoaf
Down in the bunker was hell. When I first went in, it was very dark and cold. I couldn’t see anything and everything looked creepy. After Vinson turned on the lights, it was even creepier. It looked unreal, almost like I was in a really bad dream. CONTINUED >>
