the key is if you see anything, wreckage, a raft, an oil slick or an object, you flag it. >> this is a real needle in the hay stack problem. >> digital globe which launched crowd source on monday said every pixel has had eyes on it at least 30 times. so far more than 745,000 features have been tagged. right now experts are working to determine if those tags are real clues. >> i have not seen anything of any particular at this point. we'll just keep searching. >> he has looked at the equivalent of about 4,000 city blocks himself. and refuses to give up. cnn, denver. you are in the cnn newsroom. we are tracking two major stories that the world is watching today. tensions between russia and the u.s. may be hitting new highs

not seen since the cold war. the flash point, today's controversial vote to return. they spoke by telephone. sanctions could start as soon as tomorrow. plus we are tracking dramatic twists in the search for malaysia airlines flight 370. it disappeared ten days ago triggering the aviation mystery that has baffled the world. here's what's new today. pakistan says no trace of the missing plane ever showed up on its radar systems. new scrutiny is baring down on both the pilot and his co-pilot. right now police are examining a flight simulator taken from the pilot's home. the last words ever heard from the cockpit, all right, good night, came after the plane's communications systems were switched off. plus, the search for the missing plane now includes thousands of mile of land. you'll hear why some believe the plane may have land before its last satellite contact. we have all of our experts here to track the unsolved mystery of

malaysia flight 370. first as daylight breaks in malaysia, another day without concrete answers. we have cnn jim clancy live in koala lumpur. the authorities announced the latest. are there any indications of where their investigation is leading today? >> i think what they're doing today. they search all day, hold discussions all day and then they come out. the evening hours that they have it, morning your time. but they're trying to reboot this entire investigation. yesterday they met. where we are near here. it represents 25 different countries along the two arcs where satellite data has given us an idea. just a rough idea of where flate

370 might have been at 8:11 in the morning on december 8th. the day that it disappeared. now, of course, we know that that plane was still, it had its power. on it was probably still in the air up until that point. that was the sat late handshake that told us that the plane was still active. now, we have 25 countries involved. they are all being asked for their data records. what you just reported, there about pakistan coming back and saying it is showing up nowhere on our records. other countries are being asked to do the same and they are being asked to surrender that data so that it can be submitted to an international board that will be looking for this aircraft. remember, we have an idea where it might have been right at that time. so people want to see, was anybody able to track the aircraft when it disappeared from radar here after 2:00 in the morning. is the defense minister, the

transportation minister, this is what he had to say last night about the changes that are underway. >> it has entered a new search. the search was already a highly complex multinational effort and it has now become even more difficult. the search area has been significantly expanded and the nature of the search has changed. from focusing merely on shadows, we are now at large tracks of land, 11 countries as well as deep and remote oceans. >> meantime right here on the ground as you noted, they have searched the home of the pilot, the co-pilot. they are going down through passenger list. rechecking everyone. they're checking ground staff, maintenance staff, people, the food service, anybody that touched that plane will be examined a new.

some of them have already been cleared by international agencies. that there is no terrorist on the list. that is one of the reasons the investigation is focused back on the pilots. because according to u.s. investigators, there where you are, it appears that who have was at the controls was familiar with the boeing 777. this puts pressure on the pilots. they've got the flight simulator of the main captain of the aircraft. they're looking to see what information was on it. they said nothing unusual, just what you would expect a flight simulator that allowed to you take off and land in various weather conditions. that will be scrutinized more closely. and you know, jim, the problem that we have is that there is not one shred of evidence of a motive. no manifesto, no demands, we don't have a motive. that's making this investigation just as mysterious as the disappearance of flight 370. back to you.

>> no question. as you described, the search area expanding and the list of people who need to be explored expanding. not just the people on the plane but the people who touched the plane. joining me now to discuss these developments, we have tom fuentes, and the national security analyst, former cia operative, and from ohio state university for aviation studies. if i can start with you. 239 people on the flight. several others, dozens, perhaps others who touched the flight, baggage handlers, et cetera, how do you coordinate the search of all those different pairs of hands among the different countries that might have intelligence on them? >> well, the police, the royal malaysian police force would be in a position to be in contact with all of the countries that had citizens from their country listed as being on that aircraft. as well as all of their own

citizens and be able to do the data collection there. also, supplying all those lists of personnel from day one to the fbi who are working in that command post from the very night the plane disappeared so they could go to the u.s. embassy and securely communicate back to the u.s. and check all of the u.s. data bases, national crime information center, all the no fly lists and terror watch list and of course, all the interpol data bases would be queried. so that would be ongoing with all different countries that may involve people that had a hand either being on the aircraft or servicing the aircraft. >> bob, if i can ask you. one of the key developments over the week was this revelation in the last 24 hours that the first communication system was switched off several minutes before the last communication from the cockpit. this is one of those indications that the pilots were involved. it was intentional, deliberate as malaysian authorities have said. we don't know the circumstances.

you're a cia, former cia analyst. you have to piece things like this together. what do we know about the possible motives. we looked at the past. why people have tried to hijack planes or pick them up or crash those planes. what are the possible motivations as investigators look for what one could be? >> well, right away, they're going to suspect it has something to do with islamic fundamentalism. there is a large al qaeda presence in malaysia which has never gone away after 9/11. there is been a lot of rumors out there that al qaeda was trying to or did recruit a malaysian air pilot. those weren't substantiated. the cia will be doing its own database searches. so will the national security agency. more than that, you can count on it, everybody in the cia stationed in the world will be out there going to its sources. it doesn't matter where they are and asking them what they know. this is a horribly frustrating

time consuming effort. there is not any station that's not working on this right now. >> it is a huge, an international effort. 25 different nations contributing. seth young, central for aviation studies, i want to bring in a question that came via twitter. i think it is one that i may have as well. it came from mike graham. the question is would they have air marshals on board the plane? is the u.s. the only country that would use air marshals or do other countries around the world use that as well in the years following 9/11? >> first i would like to say that it is actually an amazing experience to see that the world is gripped on this. the fact that we have people using twitter to ask questions and other folks looking at satellite imagery to help aid in this huge miss terrorism it is an amazing thing in this day and age. as far as air marshals go, air marshals and other security folks are sporadically used on flights internationally throughout the world. we don't know right now whether

or not there were air marshals on this flight and i think that goes to the coordination of this entire effort. at the passenger manifest. whether or not there may have been on this flight or any others. >> as this develops over time, you and i have the benefit of repeated conversations as the evidence has come out. what direction is the latest evidence leading you toward commandeering the plane, was it a deliberate act, the last communications from the cockpit. what direction is that leaving you? >> i think the same direction they've been in for a while here. to try to get to the bottom of who was at the controls of that aircraft. that's a difficult thing to determine. the investigators are relying on the technicians. and the experts that say that they have the flight on radar. they have the flight pinging, satellites, that type of thing. so there is a heavy reliance on

the technical information which is what the malaysian authorities are basing their opinion that a human being flew that plane off course and took westerly direction away from going to beijing, china. so the continued search then is who was at the -- who had their hands on the yoke of that aircraft to make it go in that direction. could it be either or both of those pilots who didn't expect to fly it together that particular night. if they were training together to do this as a joint effort, they didn't even know they would be together. so i think that is still the direction, the authorities are still at the captain's flight simulator to see, is there anything in that that would indicate he was practicing to land at some remote air field somewhere else. just all that data. plus again the usual work on the pilots and everybody else. phone records, financial

records, internet, cell phone contacts, conversations, friends, neighbors, colleagues, checking on his financial security. the mental security, depression, marital problems, other problems, all of these would be considerations for anybody that may have been at the controls of that aircraft. >> yeah. a massive effort in profiling now. not just the pilots but other people on board that plane or who touched that plane. >> thank you very much. stay with us. we'll continue our discussion after a quick break. also ahead, we'll meet one father who hasn't slept or let go of his phone for the past ten days. he is waiting to find out what happened to his only son. a passenger on flight 370. [ male announcer ] this is joe woods' first day of work. and his new boss told him two things -- cook what you love, and save your money. joe doesn't know it yet, but he'll work his way up from busser to waiter to chef before opening a restaurant specializing in fish and game from the great northwest. he'll start investing early,

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the desperate search for flight 370 is getting more desperate every day. i want to bring back tom fuentes. the assistant director of the fbi, national analyst, operative seth young. bob, i wonder if i can talk to you first. we talked before the break about how this is an international effort. the malaysians finally reaching out for hem asking 25 nations to examine satellite data. they got 11 nations searching on the water and in the air for signs of this plane. you have two tensions here kind of pulling that coalition apart, right? you have frustration with the malaysian government, the chinese sniping, the indians withdrawing their search and then you have sensitivities in this area of countries not wanting to reveal their capabilities. how good their radars are.

how extensive their satellite coverage is. how much do those tensions pull apart that coalition and hamper the investigation, do you think? >> you know, you hit the nail on the head. a country like india is not going to want to give up its radar screens, show the resolution, the real-time capture of images. they don't want to do it. what they'll say is we'll take a look and we'll tell what you we find. if we do, we'll give you something. that's not good enough. look at the malaysians. that plane flew right over a radar site and it took them how many days to come around and tell everybody? no wonder the chinese are furious. the chinese for so many days were searching the ocean. south of it. and it wasn't there. so we've lost a lot of time. there is a lot of mistrust. for all we know this plane has land somewhere. i doubt it but you know, people have to get on board with this and start giving up stuff.

>> seth, i want to ask you. he brought up that point, the landing. the final satellite ping from the aircraft could malaysian authorities say, have come from the ground. and we know that that northern arc, the potential path leads it entirely over ground, heading to north asia. you've study up on this. are there landing sites there, runways, et cetera, flat areas of the earth where the plane could set down? >> yeah, as an airport planner we typically look for runway lengths between 6,000 and 8,000 feet for a safe landing for a 777. although in an emergency it could land on 4,000 feet of pavement. there are numerous sites in that large region where that plane could make a landing in 4,000 feet. the issue is those air fields, civil or military, tend to be surrounded by pretty good radar coverage. so it leads to the possibility that an airplane made a safe landing in any of those air

strips is a little bit less. >> right. it would need cooperation, or cooperation on the ground. that makes it more complicated, i imagine. tom, as you look at this, that possibility, and there are a number of possibilities. i know that u.s. officials have said it is more likely that the plane is on the bottom of the indian ocean. you've investigated a lot of things like that. is that a farfetched possibility? the idea that someone commandeered this may not and took it somewhere successfully and landed it? >> i think the idea that, jim, i would say yes, it is farfetched. i would not call it impossible. it is something that theoretically could be done. but to do that means that there are more people involved in a wider conspiracy. and that will usually lead to somebody somewhere talking, bragging, more chatter if it is a terrorist group. they'll want to tell their peers, their colleagues how they

pulled it off. when the plane is on the ground, now what do you do with it? cover it, hide it. not to mention you have 230 something other people on that aircraft. what do you do with them? if you take them hostage, you have to feed them and house them and try to keep them quiet and hope they don't have a hidden cell phone or some other device. so there are so many more complications for the people if that was part of the plan, to take the aircraft, lantd and do something beyond the aircraft itself. >> the more people involved, the more difficult and more chances to leak the plan. thanks very much. more than two dozen countries are involved for the flight for 370. up next, we'll look at the massive area they need to cover. please stay with us. l light up every room i walk into. [ female announcer ] olay presents the new regenerist luminous collection. with skin energizing complex. renews surface cells to even skin tone. and reduce the appearance of dark spots. ♪

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it's been ten days since malaysia airlines flight 370 vanished. right now crews from some 25 countries are searching for the missing plane in the skies, the waerkts even from space. where that jet actually is remains a mystery. we'll bring meteorologist chad myers back in. you've done a great job for our viewers of explaining exactly not only how large the search area is but how investigators came to define that search area with what little information they had. really, that one satellite blip. i wonder if could you do that again. explain to people. you make it very clear. >> if we had three satellite blips, this would be less than the size of a city block. but we have one. which is a ring. think about like olympic rings. you have a circle and another circle. when all three of those or five

of those, on three come together, that one little cross is where the plane would be. just like your car. three satellites, sometimes six or seven. it will even know your elevation if you have four. where they cross, that's where your car is. it knows how fast you're going. 70 miles an hour. we have one ping. one handshake from one satellite that happened to ping that at 8:11 a.m. that ping is along the line right here from about the south asia, all the way here into about kazakhstan. it is not a circle because it couldn't get there. well, because it didn't have enough fuel but it didn't get there because it wasn't fast enough to get to this side of the circle from the time it left here. it couldn't fly all way over here and be part of this. so that's why they've eliminated this part of the circle. they've eliminated this part of the circle because there's pretty good radar data there. they think if it was there, we would have seen it.

so that's our arc here. this is our arc here. part of one ring of one satellite of one gps ping. it is only 8:11 p.m. the plane may have still been moving. let's assume it moved another 200 miles this way or this way. this is not a path the plane did not fly that path. it happened to be right there or there or there or there at 8:11. let's say it kept going. this is about 1,500 miles from here to here. 400 miles wide. same story here. that's 2.3 to about a million miles, square miles. you have alaska, california, and a couple of texases in there to look for this plane. >> one reminder to our viewers, you get into all those countries that they're in. there is a lot of competition for the influences there, between militaries and a the love sensitivity about how much information they share.

another hurdle. the size and the challenge of all those countries involved. >> look at all the names. this is not the flight path. this is the ping line. all the way through western china. this is about right here where the plane couldn't go any further. it wouldn't have any more fuel and it couldn't get there because it would have been going too slow to go there. it wouldn't go 700 miles per hour. it only goes about 500 miles an hour. that would have been impossible for the 8:11 ping. we don't know if that's the last ping. we assume there are other pings too but we the public don't know that yet. >> thank you for piecing it together on the map. a very big map. the agonizing wait for information is almost too much for some families, understandably. the report he talked on one father waiting for news about his only son. sadly he remembers the image. his grandchildren begging their dad be to take this flight.

>> for family of the passengers on flight 370, the wait is excruciating. if i had two or three, this father tells us, i might be able to accept it. but this is my only son. he is waiting for his son. 34-year-old, an i.t. specialist headed to beijing for a new job. surely they must find the plane, he says. that's all i hope for. the whole world is out for it. i ask him, what if they don't? he answers, if not, well, only god knows. it is in god's hand. it is fate. he tells me he worked 20 years as a security guard to put his son through college. and at home, a wife and two young children also wait for him. he was responsible for

everything, his father says, even these clothes i'm wearing. whatever country he was in he would call. once a week he would come see us with the whole family. he really took care of us. >> he was telling me that the two younger children didn't want to see their father to go beijing. so they clung to his legs and refused to let him go out the door until he promised to bring them chocolates and presents when he got home. very sad. >> before we leave, he tells us to call any time with any news we have. he hardly sleeps, he says. and now he never turns his phone off. not even for a moment. cnn, malaysia. >> investigators have searched the home of the pilots of malaysian flight 370. what we could learn from clues the two men left behind. salesperson #1: so again, throwing in the $1,000 fuel reward card

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investigators are now taking their search for the missing plane in so many different directions. one main focus is the two men inside the cockpit when the plane took off ten days ago. the captain was a flight simulator in his home and the co-pilot.

searched both men's homes and found a simulator. the reason for the scrutiny on the pilots is this. malaysian officials believe the plane could have been on the ground when it made the last satellite contact. that means somebody would have had to land the plane. somebody with a pilot's training and experience. also, the search areas being shaped by countries ruling out any chance the 777 entered their air space. india, for example, said they would have seen it. crews from 25 countries are searching for that plane from the sky, from the water and from space using their satellites. i want to bring in evan perez in washington where several u.s. agencies are now helping in that search. the fbi, the cia, the ntsb, so many agencies involved with a lot of experience in investigating crashes. what is the dominant u.s. position or theory as to what happened to that plane now? >> well, jim, i think the dominant theory is that whatever

happened to flight 370 happened in the cockpit. whatever the cause of whatever happened in the disappearance of this plane began in the cockpit. simply because all the other theories don't make sense at this point. the plane was on its route over the gulf of thailand and then turns west and disappears. that's where the authorities are focused on simply because nothing else makes sense at this point. >> now, looking, there are a number of inquiries that they're at. one thing we learn today, malaysian officials saying that a few countries have yet to clear all of their passengers, the passengers of nationalities who were manifested on the plane. why would that take so long and what kind of information could we still hope to learn from those passengers that haven't been checked out? we know that the u.s. has already run by its own terror watch list the 239 people on the plane. >> that's right. and one of the things that the

malaysians are for is to find anything that someone had any kind of affiliation to a group perhaps that could cause some kind of suspicion. this is being provided by the various countries whose citizens were on this flight. china is the biggest number. about 150 passengers were chinese citizens. so the u.s. is very much interested in any kind of information that the malaysians can gather on this. as you know, they want to make sure that if there is any sign that any of these people have traveled to the united states or traveled anywhere elsewhere they might have information, that could perhaps shed some light into what happened here. >> now if some countries haven't cleared their passengers yet, you got a lot of countries involved. so many nagsalities. is that likely to be because they're looking deeper or is it because some countries cannot do it as fast as the united states can? >> the united states set up this very robust system.

they have several of these watch lists and they've been running the checks on every name that is associated with this flight. other countries have not had any kind of, any cause to build lists like this. so that might be one of the explanations for why this might be taking so long. as you know, having been in the region, there is a little bit of distrust between malaysia and the chinese so programs that might be the cause for some of the delay as well. >> a lot of distrust between a lot of the countries involved. thanks very much to evan perez in washington. as we just mentioned, airline security changed drastically after 9/11. earlier i talked with congressman adam schiff and i asked if this could affect airport security in the u.s. >> it is possible that it could lead to us even greater scrutiny of the crew of our aircraft if it turns out that was the problem here. but most of the vulnerabilities we have seen thus far are thing we have already taken action to

correct in terms of making sure the people are not traveling with stolen documents. so i don't think we're likely to see a the love changes at home. the hope may that be we see improved airline security around the world as well as programs a better way of tracking aircraft. we'll be looking at those systems like the black box and trying to determine whether so perhaps the black boxes can transmit signals rather than having to find them under an ocean. so those are possible but i don't think you're likely to see it manifest in longer lines at the airport. >> i've been getting a lot of questions over twitter. why is it that pilots can switch off those communications systems? and it is interesting you mentioned that as a possible change down the line. >> there could be technological changes with the feedback of the ntsb that will make it easier to find aircraft.

that would make it easier to get information about what happened in the last minutes in a cockpit without having to try to retrieve a black box from 15,000 feet under the water. so those changes could happen over time. >> there's already one country that has changed in response to the flight. we're learning a report out of israel, in light of the possibility that this plane was hijacked, it is now asking planes entering israeli air space to identify themselves earlier so one response there in israel already to what we're learning about the malaysian airlines flight in asia. now recommendive schiff said if all airlines around the world did check their passenger manifest with the stolen passport list, a major security weakness, at least one could be fixed as well. there is much more ahead. next we turn to the other big story of the day. the land slide results in that referendum in crimea. ♪

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we have this breaking news out of ukraine. it is dead on arrival as far as the u.s. is concerned. president obama telling russian president putin today that the

u.s. and international community would never accept the vote as legitimate. crimeans voted overwhelmingly to quit ukraine and join. senior international correspondent for cnn nick peyton walsh explained what's ahead. >> jim, what happens next for crimeans here, certainly we've had long advertised a tight timetable ahead. the defacto prime minister here said he is going to send a delegation to moscow to address the practicalities. we've heard they'll adopt the same time zone as russia, adopt the russian ruble. of course there are infrastructure questions ahead. the mainland may clues to isolate them. they'll have to then work out their own water, internet, phone

supplies from the russian mainland. the question, what happens to those crimeans here who did not support the idea of joining up with russia? that's the pro ukrainian groups that we've not heard from at all during this electoral campaign. very much a one-sided contest. the other question, too, the 10% ethnic minority here muslims have been deeply concerned. boycotted the vote, many of them. many worried about what will happen when pro russian forces take a stronger grip of the peninsula here vefl troubling days ahead. there are still ukrainian traps on military bases here holding out despite pro russian militia swirling around them. many hope they will either melt away bloodlessly in the days ahead but also, i think, this really tight timetable that crimea has put forward, they'll need to see an endorsement joining the federation russian federation for that to put into effect, jim.

>> thanks very much of with us now to help explain what's next in the ukrainian crisis, a former state department official in the clinton administration. cliff, i want to ask you, the u.s., washington, president obama, they have put up a number of warnings over the last several weeks. the promise of sanctions, the promise to declare as the president did today in his phone call with president putin the u.s. would not recognize this referendum. russia has sped and broken right through them. is it in effect settled that crimea will become part of russia? >> i think it is. we and our european allies are in a difficult situation. we have to push back. we have to sanction russia. we're left with no choice. as we do so, it will cause a lot of pain on a lot of people. u.s. business, russian business and could it force russia into a very geopolitical directly.

we're in a very dangerous perch right now. >> this is something that 20 years ago with all the hope after the fall of the wall and the collapse of the soviet union, new cooperation in a number of international crises, right? where russia and the u.s. worked together, russia and you were a and certainly, arguably more importantly, those close neighborly relations in europe between russia and eastern europe. how sharp away from that direction is this turn? people have talked a lot about the cold war returning. you're not going to have the u.s. and russia battling it out in latin america but in europe it looks remarkably like the cold war. >> it does look like a cold war. but i think it will take a different shape. russia is not a global power like the u.s. is. we're not facing off against an equal anymore. but russia could become, if this continues to a trajectory that it seems to be on, a country that is outside the international trading system.

a country that is certainly not a partner of the united states. a partner that could veer much more toward china and even iran. now iran is hard enough a crisis right now. and the iranian nuclear issue. think what it would be if we're facing off against a nuclear armed russia. one of the largest producers in the world. we're facing a potentially dangerous realignment in the political system. >> you mentioned an shia. we noted that ukraine has taken some steps to secure its natural gas facilities because russia has used that pressure tactic before and even shut off the gas to ukraine a couple years ago. that is a real strangle hold on europe if you're talking about a tit for tat. >> what we saw in 2009 was the russians in effect turning off the gas to ukraine, ukraine turned around and siphoned the gas so there was a shortfall to europe. given the situation, we could well see that again.

that's just another risk that we're facing here which is that the europeans in a matter of months run out of gas and our e.u. allies face a cold winter next winter. this is a multidimensional problem we're facing and a big one. >> i have a final question for you. if putin succeeds in crimea, how like will is it that he crosses that bored he into eastern ukraine? >> i don't think it is on balance likely. this is personal for him. he feels like ukraine belongs to russia. at the end of the derrek scenes of bloodshed on russian tv, slav on slav killing each other. if putin realizes it and i think he will, the am of damage we can cause the russian economy i think at the end of the day will stop this guy from taking that very, very, very, very fateful step. >> slav on slav. we have a precursor of the war

in the '90s. thank you very much. a very sobering read of the seriousness of the events in crimea. coming up, we return to the mystery of the flight 370. how this has trans fixed the world and taken over social media in the process. more on c. yep, everybody knows that. well, did you know the ancient pyramids were actually a mistake? uh-oh. geico. fifteen minutes could save you fifteen percent or more on car insurance.

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the missing airliner is dominating facebook and twitter. we've been looking at how the mystery is trending worldwide and online. >> this is a very popular story online. it has transfixed most of our audience. it has been the number one story since the news broke. you see on the website it is still the number one story here. this is numbers comparable to one of the most popular stories in the history of cnn.com. right up there with the inauguration of u.s. president barack obama and the death of michael jackson on. social media we're also seeing a strong interest in this story. let's talk about twitter. though the story is not trending anymore on the u.s. side of the, of twitter, it is in malaysia and india. remains among the top stories. we've seen it go from the number two story to sort of more down toward the top five stories. people are using this #here at home for those who want to follow along. #mh 370.

it is a communicate. it is not just social media. it is also the browsers. one of the top stories on google news when you go to that website. lots of interest in this story. not just from those directly impacted that have a family member or friends on that plane but just people that really want to know, what happened to this plane and the mystery of where this plane could be. lots of people very, very interested in this. >> we've gotten hundreds of questions via twitter and thank you to our viewers for your questions. we were able to answer a few of them. the disappearance of malaysia's flight 370 isn't the first time a plane has vanished, apparently without a trace. randy looks at other mysteries and how they turned out. >> air france flight 447 was on its way from bras toil france when it plunged into the atlantic ocean killing all 228

people on board. that was june 2009. and like malaysia airlines flight 370, the plane vanished without a distress call. >> we really need to know what happened on that night in this middle of the ocean. >> finding out what happened would take time. five days of intense searching before floating wreckage was found. and another two years before the aircraft's voice recorder and flight data recorder were pulled from the ocean floor. >> we can only be happy at this stage that two years after this accident, we have hope. >> why did it crash? it took a year for france's bureau of investigation to release its definitive investigation. the result? pilot error. the pilots pointed the nose upward rather than downward. 13 years before that crash there was twa flight 800.

conspiracy theorists believe we still don't know the truthful was it a bomb? a missile or mechanical failure that brought the jet down just 12 minutes after takeoff from new york's jfk airport. it was just 17th, 1996. all 230 people on board the paris bound 747 were killed. 4,000 interviews later, claims that a u.s. navy ship had accidentally shot down airplane. finally, four years into it, terrorism and a friendly fire missile strike were ruled out. >> determines that the probable cause of the flight 800 accident was an explosion of the center wing tank resulting from ignition of the flammable fuel air mixture in the tank. >> another great mystery, u.s. air flight 427. it left chicago's o'hare international airport on september 8th, 1994, bound for pittsburgh. just six miles out while passing

through jet stream of another plane, flight 427 began to shake. it rolled upside down, spiraling 300 miles per hour toward the ground. 132 passengers and crew were killed. >> it involved hearings and every is million dollars worth of testing to duplicate the failure. the findings were never 100% conclusive because they could not duplicate the failure. >> more than a decade earlier, flight 007 from new york city to seoul was blown out of the sky. september 1st, 1983. turns out it was shot down, killing all 269 people on board. the race was on for answers inside the black box beneath the sea. >> the world is waiting for the soviet union to tell the truth. >> the truth ended up being that the pilots had set their auto pilot but it failed, taking them directly into soviet air space.

looking at the erratic flate path of malaysia flight 370, that scenario seems unlikely. but we may never know for sure. cnn. >> i want to give you the headlines at this hour on the mystery of flight 370. investigators in malaysia are continuing their hard look at the two men in the cockpit when that missing 777 took off. the captain who had a flight simulator in his home and the co-pilot. police have sexed both men's homes. no word on what was found. also today, malaysian official believe the plane could have been on the ground when it last made satellite contact. that means someone would have landed the plane. someone with pilot experience. our continuing coverage flight 370 and the crisis in ukraine continues one hour from now. first the original series, death row series begins right now.

// st ar t on this episode of "death row stories --" >> would you like to think that upstanding citizens won't suffer torture and murder in their own home. >> after a brutal murder, detectives accuse a woman with no criminal record -- >> he said we will break you. >> until the mother of an american hero puts her all into a fate for freedom. >> i knew she was not guilty. it should be obvious to anyone. when i saw that, my jaw dropped. >> this is one of the most egregious cases i have ever seen. >> there is a body in the water. >> he was butchered and murdered. >> many people proclaimed their innocence. >> in this case there are a number of things that