>> jimmy: thanks to ray romano, sebastian maniscalco and paul russell. thanks to you too. apologies to matt damon. we did run out of time for him. "nightline" is next, thank you for watching, goodnight. this is "nightline." tonight, serial killer caught. the suspect in a series of murders in a los angeles courtroom today. >> it was chilling, and i've been in this work for four plus decades. >> prosecutors allege jared powell shot for men over four consecutive day, gripping the

community in terror. authorities think they caught him just in time. >> this individual that we believe is responsible may have been out there and reoffended. >> the controversial technology that helped beverly hills pd catch him. >> they can immediately determine if that vehicle is on the road, and if so, exactly where it is. >> is it being used in your town? plus, poisoned pills. >> we don't know what he thought he was buying, but what he got was a dose of fentanyl. >> teens hoping to buy recreational drugs with a swipe or a click getting something deadly instead thinking was murder. >> snapchat speaking exclusively to us about how they're working with parents towards a solution. inside the codes to disguise what's really being sold. how one pill can kill. and -- ♪ rocking around the christmas tree ♪ >> the rocking holiday song that finally made it to number one, 65 years after it was released. >> "nightline" will be right

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web of surveillance technology. but while many in the community are relieved, civil liberties advocates question whether it goes too far. here is action's jacqueline lee making her night line debut. >> reporter: suspected serial killer jerrid powell appearing today in a los angeles courtroom. not for the first time. >> we're back on the record. people versus jerrid joseph powell. >> reporter: the 33-year-old with a prior felony record now in custody, shackled after being charged with murdering four men in four consecutive day, throw of them experiencing homelessness. >> mr. powell, you have a constitutional and statutory right to a speedy arraignment. >> reporter: this authorities say marking the end of a spree of terror that gripped residents in the l.a. area for days. >> police say they believe a lone suspect has murder three homeless people in l.a. since sunday, each victim shot to death. >> it was chilling. and i've been in this work for four-plus decades. the cold-blooded manner in which

he walks up and shoots this individual without any hesitation, no interactions. and then leave that location. >> reporter: according to police, all four men were seemingly chosen as random. >> the individual responsible for these horrific crimes was found, caught, and will now be held accountable. >> reporter: the crime spree began in the wee hours of last sunday morning. powell allegedly shooting and killing 37-year-old jose bolanos while he was asleep on the street. the next day, around 5:00 a.m., powell then allegedly killing 62-year-old mark diggs, who was also asleep, roughly 20 minutes from the first murder scene. then on tuesday, authorities believe powell followed 42-year-old father of two nicholas sambolin to his san dimas home to a charging station, robbing him, shooting him, and then fleeing the scene in a gray 2024 bmw captured on a security camera.

his wife discovering his body in the couple's garage. >> mr. powell was held for the senseless killing of nicholas sambolin, a husband and father of two young children at his home in san dimas this past tuesday. >> reporter: the final killing happening last wednesday, powell apparently shooting a 52-year-old man, his name apparently with meld until police notify his relatives. early morning on thursday, november 30th, powell's license plate was identified by an automated license plate reader as he was driving through beverly hills. police connecting his car to the murder in san dimas. >> it pinged off one of our license plate readers. between our dispatcher, our virtual parole officers, which were able to vector officers in and stop the individual safely and take him in to custody. >> reporter: the chief saying it wasn't about a easy arrest. so initially when the suspect pinged on the system, he didn't

comply. >> correct. we were able the bring in our armored vehicle called a bearcat, block the suspect? in. and at that time he did start complying and was taken into custody safely. >> reporter: investigators recovering a handgun from the vehicle, allegedly matching it to the other three homicides. chief stainbrook says the arrest highlights the success of the city's enhanced surveillance appara apparatus. >> when a car comes into the city that is stolen or wanted for a crime, we know and we can focus in on that vehicle. we're doing very well. when criminals come here, they get caught. >> reporter: beverly hills established the beverly hills watch center in june 2022. >> we're fortunate enough to have a very supportive city council that funded the realtime watch center which incorporated our drones, our camera technology, our license plate readers and live 911 all in one center. we have 2400 cameras around the city. so literally, our officers, our virtual parole officers in the realtime watch center can be almost anywhere in the city within seconds.

>> reporter: the operation launched after a rise of violent home invasions and a wave of shocking thefts across the area. so-called smash and grab crimes where suspects inundate high-end retail businesses to rob them. but the use of alpr is widespread across the united states is controversial. the aclu raising concerns over the practice in the past, saying in their report titled "you are being tracked." the implementation of automatic license plate readers poses serious privacy and other civil liberties threats. >> a mild mannered person like myself. >> reporter: some having mixed opinions on having their every move watched. >> they're going track me throughout the city for just the sake of tracking me? no, i don't agree with that. >> unfortunately, i feel it's very necessary. i want them to have a second thought before they stop people like my wife on the street and they tell her to give them her jewelry or me my watch. >> reporter: any time we're talking about privacy, there is going to be a cost benefit

analysis. what is the cost to society versus what is the benefit in a case like this. where you have the suspect's license plate and you want to know is that person out there. >> reporter: civil rights groups have also expressed concerns around how long data like this is kept. the beverly hills police department says the data is kept for 12 months. >> this is a very valuable tool for law enforcement, to be able to use. the controversy really comes into play in terms of how this information is stored. how long it's stored for. exactly what it's used for. who has access to it. >> reporter: but police emphasize that their efforts are working. >> violent crime has gone down. as you can see, we've had a lot of successes in catching the recent serial murder. the more evidence you have, the better off you are in trying to solve crimes. it's amazing that they can use

this video. they can immediately access these license plate readers and potentially solve crimes that 10, 15 years ago, they might not ever have been able to crack. >> reporter: powell faces a sentence of life without the possibility of parole if convicted on all charges. >> we know there is controversy out there about the usage of this system. if we did not enter that plate into the system, this individual that we believe is responsible may have been out there and reoffended. >> juju: our thanks to jacqueline. and welcome to the "nightline" family. when we come back, teens looking for drugs on apps sometimes paying with their lives. ( ♪ ) nissan has a car for everyone. (engine revving) every driver who wants more.

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>> juju: welcome back. snapchat is known for disappearing messages, and some teens are using it and other online platforms to buy drugs, which are readily available with just a swipe. but too often, those drugs, from pain filled with fentanyl. here is beckley worley. >> reporter: every monday here on the campus at uc berkeley -- >> this is a safety precaution to test your drugs. >> thank you. >> of course. stay safe. >> reporter: volunteers from end overdose, a youth-led nonprofit

are trying to save lives. >> we're just giving out free fentanyl test strips. >> reporter: in just under two minutes, these test strips let you know if any of your drugs are laced with fentanyl, a potentially deadly synthetic opioid. >> this is good right here. always know what you're taking. fentanyl-laced nowadays. super dangerous. >> reporter: presented as authentic prescription drugs on social media, lethal counterfeit pills run rampant, leading to a staggering rise in what's now being called fentanyl poisoning. >> this was murder. this is fentanyl poisoning. he did not mean to take fentanyl. he did not want to take fentanyl, but what he took was counterfeit, and it was fentanyl. >> reporter: tonight we hear from two devastated families, one part of a class action lawsuit against snapchat. >> that was at his brother's wedding. >> reporter: the other working with the social media giant, both united in warning others about the dangers of buying prescription drugs on social

media. >> it's a bit of a controversial issue, the distinction between a fentanyl poisoning and a fentanyl overdose. a young person who goes online looking for a xanax, and they're sold a counterfeit and the active ingredient is fentanyl, which is highly potent, and that young person dies as a result, that is not an overdose. >> reporter: although overall teen drug use dropped during the pandemic, experts say counterfeit drugs on social media platforms are becoming riskier. the dea stating seven out of every ten pills they seized contain a lethal dose of fentanyl. an the cdc reporting that over 150 people die every day from fentanyl-related overdoses. >> our son sammy was an amazing kid. sweet, funny, curious, an a student, and we had no idea legal untested drugs could be delivered to our house as easily as a pizza.

>> reporter: you may know her as a therapist from the oprah winfrey network. but dr. laura berman says nothing could have prepared her for the night she found her 16-year-old son sammy struggling to breathe. >> there is nothing worse. there is no deeper, wider, more profound pain. >> you need grief counseling. you need therapy, and you need to make room for your family's grief journey. >> reporter: borman and her husband are suing snap inc., the parent company of snapchat. they're joined by 60 other families with similar heartbreaking families. the lawsuit alleges snap and snapchat's role in elicit drug sales to teens was the foreseeable result of the design, structures and policies snap chose to implement to increase its revenues, and it specifically targets the app's features like automatically deleted messages and the my eyes only privacy option which they say makes illegal activities harder to track. jennifer park stout is the company's head of global public

policy. >> families are suing snapchat because they lost children to fentanyl. what can you tell us than litigation? >> my heart goes out to those families and to any family that has suffered really what is an unimaginable loss. and through our work at snap, we've deployed technologies and tools and created new products that we think will really be effective in combatting this problem. >> reporter: it's illegal and against the policies of every other major social media company to sell elicit drugs on their drugs on their platforms. >> you want to look up oxy or drugs, any drug platform, you're immediately taken not to content about drugs or the sale of drugs, you're taking to our heads-up portal that snapchat has designed and it has content in here that tells you what you need to know if you're interested in drugs. this is a devastating crisis, and it's happened really underneath our noses, and we're doing really everything we can

to wrap our arms around this problem in such a meaningful way. >> hi, charlie. >> think. >> who you? >> reporter: charlie turnin was three weeks away from college graduation. but in may of 2020 his parents say he used snapchat to buy what he thought was percocet. >> he was prescribed percocet after his back surgery. >> reporter: once his prescription ran out, they say charlie got a fake pill laced with fentanyl. that night their priest coming to the front door. >> they said charlie died. what do you mean charlie died? they think it's pills. pills? what are you talking about pills? >> reporter: mary turnin has kept her son's room just as it was. >> this was charlie's room. >> reporter: charlie died of fentanyl poisoning. >> all his stuff. i come in here. and the great thing after he died, and i still get little

glimpses of it is that i get his scent. at different times when he knows i need it. >> reporter: the turnins honoring charlie by educating teens about illegal pill sales, all through their foundation song for charlie. and they're also taking a unique approach by working with snap. ed even joining snap's safety advisory board. >> i think the light bulb moment for them was the deception, right. users are being exploited by bad actors who are deceptively marking a highly potent chemical as a safe familiar medicine. >> families like song for charlie and ed and mary turnan have been critical to our understanding and trying to get ahead of what the problem is so we can combat and eradicate this kind of content on our platform. >> here we have a menu for pills. it looks like it's crystal meth.

and then we have some lsd that we usually see. >> reporter: five years ago uc san diego anthropology professor and global health researcher timothy mackey was hired by the federal government to use artificial intelligence to track and analyze drug dealers on social media. >> i would call it a confluence of technology and a public health emergency. when we shut off that access to prescription drugs, people went online. so it proliferated a lot of online content. and then because there was so much competition in the marketplace, people started to introduce fentanyl to cut things for cheaper price, more potent, but also more dangerous. so we're in the kind of intersection between technology not being regulated and counterfeit drugs becoming more prevalent on the internet. >> reporter: he says that dealers use all the platforms, not just snapchat. >> how accurate? >> these are 97 to 9 8% accurate when used. >> reporter: back in berkeley, students are being proactive. their message, if you're going

to use drug, test them for fentanyl first. >> we're part of the harm reduction community. our main goal is overdose prevention from the lens that we're nonjudgmental. >> parents need to be just as involved in their kids' virtual lives as their real lives, and that takes some efforts. >> continue to have conversations with your kids. not just once, just this ongoing conversation, because that's vital. >> after your kid passes, you want to find a purpose. you want to make their life worth something. and so we formed a community of other parents who are trying to change the laws. >> we're doing it because we don't want any more kids to die. and every other parent that we've met is really doing it for the same reason. >> juju: our thanks to becky. and when we come back, it's been rocking around since brenda lee was 13. but it's never been here before. ♪

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and finally tonight, the oldest singer ever to make it to number one.

♪ rockin' around ♪ >> it's one of the most infectious holiday songs ever, but it never reached number one, until now. brenda lee sang "rockin' around the christmas tree" in 1998 at just 13. it's now the number one single on billboard's hot 100 chart, the oldest song ever at the top spot. ♪ >> juju: got to love social media. that's "nightline" for tonight. you can watch all of our full episodes on hulu. thanks for staying up with us, america. good night.