tv The House of Suh MSNBC June 23, 2012 11:00am-12:00pm PDT
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and is scalable as far as the mind can see. our cloud is the cloud other clouds look up to. welcome to the uppernet. verizon. he has identified himself as one of jerry sandusky's victims, sexually abused as a young boy. he is one of the very first to speak publicly and tonight he told his story to kate snow. >> if jerry sandusky were standing here. >> i would punch him in the mouth. >> would you say anything first? >> no. he knows what he did. >> what jerry sandusky did was sexually abuse him more than 100 times. >> it's almost an unbelievable story. >> i was scared to say anything. also tonight, it's a christmas story that people across the country reacted to. a mother who lost three of her
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children and both of her parents in a christmas morning house fire, and yet she survived. tonight her exclusive interview with matt lauer. >> i woke up and i was choking. i realized there was a fire. >> did you hear smoke detectors? >> now she's consumed by questions. who is to blame? >> i want to know what caused my fire. and why did they tear my house down? and he's the screenwriter whose characters just seemed to sound better than the rest of us. >> i want the truth! >> you can't handle the truth! >> tonight we get to see savannah guthrie keep up with him stride for stride. >> "a few good men," "the social factor." all contain his unique writing style all delivered at 100 miles an hour. also tonight, we get to see mitt romney as only one other
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person gets to see him. we'll get a look at the romney campaign through the eyes of his body man, his personal aide who never leaves his side. >> the romney peanut butter sandwich. there is our -- >> our real man with crust. >> that and more as "rock center" gets under way. good evening and welcome, and tonight in the trial of jerry sandusky, the jury has the case. while they have broken for the night, the wait is now officially underway for a verdict. most of us by now know the allegations that sandusky abused these kids he was supposed to be helping. many people heard him discuss the charges in his interview with bob costas here on "rock center." but we have not until tonight heard from one of his accusers. you are about to hear from travis weaver. he told his story to a grand jury, though he did not testify in the current trial, and fair
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warning, as with anything to do with this story, some of these details are highly disturbing. here now, kate snow's conversation with a young man who is, as of this moment, speaking out. >> reporter: if jerry sandusky were sitting right here -- >> i'd punch him in his mouth. >> would you say anything first? >> no. there would be no reason to say anything. he knows what he did. i know what he did. >> reporter: travis weaver says jerry sandusky sexually abused him more than 100 times over a period of four years, starting in 1992 when he was just ten years old. he says he thought he was the only boy it happened to until he saw sandusky on the news, arrested on charges he molested other boys. weaver, now 30, had never told a soul, but last fall he told his family his story for the first time. he says he still feels numb. >> reporter: you don't cry about it now?
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>> no. >> reporter: when is the last time you cried about it? >> a long time ago. >> reporter: weaver's story echoes many of sandusky's accusers. mom and dad split up when he was little. there was a lot of fighting he shared in the broken home with two brothers. it drove ten-year-old travis weaver to a summer camp run by a charity called the second mile. what was it like the very first time you met jerry sandusky? >> it was great. it was like meeting my hero. >> reporter: almost immediately, he says jerry sandusky took an interest in him, taking him to football games, inviting him to work out with him at the gym on penn state's campus. and like many of the young men who testified in court, weaver says from the beginning, sandusky expected them to shower together. >> picking me up, trying to give me like bear hugs. he would wash my hair or my back sometimes. >> reporter: he says they would move to a couch in the locker room just beyond the showers.
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>> he would dry me off with a towel, say he was trying to wrestle with me and he would just have me lay on top of him while we were both still naked. >> reporter: i know this is really hard stuff to talk about. but what would he do when he had you down on top of him? >> he would rub my backside. sometimes he would roll over on top of me and blow on my stomach and rub my genitals. and then it progressed into oral sex. >> reporter: did it ever escalate to anything else? >> he tried anal sex one time, but it hurt really bad so i made him stop. that was in the locker rooms. >> reporter: in the shower? >> yes. >> reporter: how old were you? >> around 11 or 12.
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>> reporter: weaver says sandusky rarely spoke during the abuse other than to say, you're not going to tell anyone about this. do you remember what was racing through your head? >> i just couldn't believe what was happening. i was scared. >> reporter: at the same time, weaver says sandusky was inviting him to sleep over at his house. >> i stayed at his house probably over 100 times. >> reporter: 100 times. >> it was over a few years, but yeah, i stayed there a lot. >> reporter: after dottie sandusky cooked dinner for them all, weaver said he would go down to the basement and wait, knowing that as soon as the rest of the family went to bed, sandusky would come down. >> he would come down and talk to me and try to play a video game a little bit or play pool or something, and he would work his way up to it. >> reporter: and you would know that he was going to expect sexual acts. >> yes.
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>> reporter: weaver says when it was over, jerry sandusky would leave him and go back upstairs to his wife. why do you think his family thought you were there? >> i don't know. i never asked. >> reporter: did they treat you like one of the family? >> the rest of the kids did, but dottie, i don't think she really liked me too much. she was always, like, distant. she didn't really want to talk to me too much. i always thought she was a mean person just because of how she acted towards me. she never really wanted to talk to me. when she did talk to me, she was just real stern, you know, with everything i said to her. >> reporter: cold? >> cold, yes. >> reporter: did she ever walk in on you, see anything inappropriate? >> no. no, she didn't. >> reporter: do you think she had any idea what was going on, in your opinion? >> i can't say for sure, but, i
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mean, how could you not know something was going on? >> reporter: he didn't always stay in the basement. sometimes, weaver says, he was in the second floor guest room right across from the sandusky's bedroom. did he ever engage in any sexual acts with you in the guest room across the hall from dottie sandusky? >> a couple times. a couple times he performed oral sex on me. >> reporter: and mrs. sandusky was across the hall when that happened. >> yes. >> reporter: it's almost an unbelievable story. >> yeah. i was scared to say anything. >> reporter: because you thought no one would believe you. >> yes. >> reporter: is this a guy who thought he would never get caught? >> yes. i don't think the thought even crossed his mind. >> reporter: jerry sandusky gave him gifts, took him to fancy dinners, even brought him to the 1995 rose bowl, things his own family could never have provided. >> he told me he loved me, he
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told my father he wanted to adopt me. >> reporter: so jerry sandusky said to your father, i'd like to adopt your son. >> yes. >> reporter: weaver's dad, who works at penn state university's tv station, confirms his son had years of contact with sandusky and that there was talk of adoption. finally, at age 14, travis weaver says, he reached a breaking point. sandusky took him to philadelphia for a second mile fundrai fundraiser, he says, and started wrestling with him in the hotel room. >> i told him if he didn't get off me, i was going to call the police on him, and he just laughed at me and forced me to stay on the bed and told me if i ever said anything that nobody was going to believe me and he would get my dad fired from penn state. >> reporter: so, he says, he did not call the police. but a couple of weeks later, he did move to cleveland to live with his mother.
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you wanted to get away from jerry sandusky? . >> yes. >> reporter: his life took a downward spiral. he spent time in jail for robbery. he and his girlfriend alicia have two daughters together, ages 2 and 4. he says he's angry at the adults who could have stopped sandusky. like former penn state assistant coach mike mcquery, he testified he saw sandusky with a young boy pinned against the locker room shower. he said he reported the incident to the university authorities but never called the local police. >> he's a coward for not calling the police, for not stopping jerry right there. he said he slammed his locker and walked out. why would you slam your locker and walk out and leave that kid standing there and let that keep happening? you don't just abandon a little helpless kid. >> reporter: he also blames himself. >> if i would have said
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something, that would have stopped him from being around other kids. >> reporter: that's a big burden to carry. >> i know it's not my fault, but i can't help but feel that way. >> reporter: weaver is now suing sandusky, second mile and penn state university. his lawyer is jeff anderson, who specializes in representing sexual abuse victims, including many cases involving the catholic church. one of the things jerry sandusky's attorney said over and over again is he believes people came forward later in order to cash in. >> that's ridiculous. why would all these kids that never even met each other all have the similar, if not the exact same, story about what he did and go in court and go to trial and testify in front of
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all these people about all this stuff that happened if it never happened? that's absurd. >> reporter: what his lawsuit is really about, weaver says, is finally finding his voice. you're also speaking out, you've said to me, because you want other kids out there to know that it's okay to speak out. >> yes. it is okay to speak out. >> reporter: this stuff is really uncomfortable to talk about. >> it's extremely uncomfortable. it feels better, though, once you start talking about it to people, letting everybody know what happened. >> reporter: people are going to feel for you deeply when they hear your story. they're going to want to know that you're okay now and you're getting help. can you be okay? >> yeah. i'll be okay when he's in prison. >> looking in his eyes, kate snow, this is so bracing and so far beyond the ken of most of us. backing up to one thing, he did
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not testify in this current trial where the jury is sequester sequestered, and why is that? >> reporter: he came forward after the dimindictments last f, after jerry sandusky was arrested. he was one of the group of guys who came forward and testified. he testified before a grand jury. prosecutors have his testimony. he's willing to testify in court. they're holding that group in case they need them, in case they get a not guilty verdict out of this current jury, they could potentially go after federal charges using people like travis. >> after the detail that broke this morning that jerry sandusky's stepson came forward with his own charges, that's what kept him out of the trial? >> jerry sandusky's son was prepared to testify, and he was prepared to say he was a victim of sexual abuse. you look at the parallels of
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what travis just said. >> it makes it all more chilling. >> we reached out to jerry sandusky's attorney. no comment from mr. amendola. >> thapgnks, kate, for your fin reporting. looking at the interview with jerry sandusky last november, there was so much there, we didn't have time to air all of jerry sandusky's comments. we have again post aid major portion of it on our website tonight. we'll take a break later in our broadcast, by the way, the story that received attention across this country for how achingly sad it was. the woman who lost all three of her children and her own parents in a house fire in which she survived on christmas morning. tonight she talks with matt lauer. >> it's impossible to describe how it is that you can't go in and save your own children, but
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welcome back. the name eric sorks -- sorkin is synonymous with high ideals, strong characters and a well told story. the characters in sorkin land speak in a way the rest of us wish we could, from folks in the west wing, to facebook, to folks in the marine corps. next up, debuting this weekend, sorkin takes on cable news, and tonight, savannah guthrie, takes on the measure of this celebrated screenwriter. >> i want answers!
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>> you can't handle the truth. >> the best lines have come from the mind of one man. >> if you guys were the invent orz of facebook, you would have invented facebook. >> eric sorksin is a rarity, a writer who is somewhat of a celebrity himself. he's famous for the snappy dialogue delivered at 100 miles an hour, often while walking at a clip almost as fast. >> we should be going faster? >> it would be this fast. we would be walking like that, i would take that, i would look at it, that's not important, i put it down. thanks very much, we can put that there. some kind of sports metaphor. >> reporter: a trademark style honed from his earliest days. >> at my dinner table, anyone
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who used just one word and could have used ten just wasn't trying enough. >> do you ever look at that and think, am i being too sorkiny here? >> that's not the word i use. i just say, that's just bad writing. don't do that. >> reporter: his latest project, "the newsroom" on hbo, a drama tackling the world of newsroom politics. >> this is kind of the newsroom of your dreams? >> it is. >> all those nights of throwing things at the tv, now you can say how it really should be done. >> honestly, i'm not trying to say how anything should be done. but in a romantic comedy, love works the way we wish it would work and here the news works the way we wish it would work. >> the protagonist, played by jeff daniels, has some sort of
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breakdown, daring to tell the nation what it doesn't want to hear. >> there is absolutely no evidence to support the statement that we're the greatest country in the world. we're seventh in literacy, 27 n in math -- >> you are known for your liberal politics. your lead character is a registered republican. >> so much for being known as a liberal. these vessels are not enough to say what i want. i don't have much political sophistication at all. >> really, you're not known for liberal politics? >> i don't feel that way myself. maybe i am. i've met activists. i'm not one of them. they'll march, they'll do things that are hard. >> you're not that motivated? >> i'm not. >> reporter: but when it comes to writing, that's a different story. sorkin is exceptionally hard on himself, even cringing at some of his most acclaimed work. >> if i'm flipping around and "a few good men" is on, really anything that i wrote more than a month ago, it will feel to me
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like my high school yearbook picture. >> reporter: even these famous lines that everyone love and still quote? >> yeah, because i just know i can do it better. >> reporter: sorkin is just as demanding as others, expecting a lot from actors like emily mortimer, delivering those lines like they roll off the tongue. what was hard to remember? >> i had to say the line, jim, jim, jim, jim, jim. i was obviously doing it a number of different ways, and at one point during the rehearse e ales, and he stopped me and said, emily, you keep doing a different number of jims. it's five jims. >> reporter: sorkin was once an actor himself, starting with his high school drama club in new york. he briefly pursued a career on
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stage. we found some pictures of you. >> oh, good. i'm sure these won'ting at all embarrassing. this is a midsummer night's dream and i'm 21 in this picture. my god. >> reporter: is that the cocky actor period? >> yes, this is the cocky actor period. >> reporter: last month sorkin recalled those early days when he delivered the commencement address at his alma mater, syracuse university. >> i wish i could tell you there is a trick to avoid the screw-ups, but the screw-ups, they're coming for you. >> reporter: the screw-ups, behind his emmys and accolades, a dark secret. he was addicted to cocaine, coming to a head at the airport. he pleadwas arrested and pled g.
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>> i feel like we're writing about the things from a crack addict. >> reporter: what was the appeal? >> it felt like everything i was writing was awesome and i had all this energy. my biggest fear when i stopped was, was i going to be able to write anymore. >> reporter: do you think your writing was better during that period? >> i don't. but even if i was writing shakespeare when i was high, it's worth it to be straight. >> reporter: sorkin has remained drug free for 11 years. he loves his daughter rocxie. >> fatherhood is the greatest thing in the world ful she's just now starting to watch some things that i've written, and it's kind of frightening. i really want her to like it, and i'm worried she'll be a little bored by it. i'm also worried that she's going to worry she's going to
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hurt my feelings if she doesn't love it. >> reporter: that's so aaron sorkin. it's a little neurotic. >> a little. i try to keep the neurosis away from her as much as. >> reporter: he will be writing about steve jobs. what would you be doing if you weren't a writer? >> i would be unemployed. >> the only thing about this work is how dumb it makes me feel. i go days without quoting the framers to the constitution. >> reporter: we're all in this club, aren't we? i don't speak sorkinese, either. he's obviously very intelligent. he says he was the youngest of siblings that were much, much smarter than him and he just had to keep up, so he's pretty humble about it. it's not just the content, it's the length. he says most scripts are 20 to
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25 pages longer than the average one because he puts so many darn words in them. >> and like you said, the angst of his daughter liking his -- >> he already has so much success, and here he is a household name, practically, for writing. that's something really great in hollywood. >> savannah guthrie, thank you. as always. we're back in a moment with matt lauer's exclusive interview, after this. [ male announcer ] don't miss red lobster's four course seafood feast, just $14.99. start with soup, salad and cheddar bay biscuits
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it happened in connecticut. it had taken the lives of one woman's entire family, her three little girls and her parents. we later learned the woman's name: madonna badger. everyone who saw the story or saw coverage of that awful funeral wondered how this woman kept on going. tonight we meet her and we hear her story. madonna badger agreed to sit down with matt lauer and talk about the christmas tragedy that remains so achingly sad. >> can you envision the word healing being appropriate in your life at some point? >> i think healing is the only word. i'm a raw nerve, basically. obviously, after six months, you hope to grow the slightest bit of skin over the nerve. i mean, getting well, i don't know, that sounds insane, but i don't know. i think healing is the only word you can use. >> reporter: how do you heal from what madonna badger has
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endured? how do you make sense of a christmas morning fire that kills all three of your children and both of your parents. >> i remembered whenever i had heard stories like that, i always said, you know, how did those people live through that? there is no way. i could not live through that. >> reporter: madonna badger's life changed forever last christmas eve. her family was celebrating together. parents lomer and pauline johnson and her three little girls, seven-year-old twins grace and sara and nine-year-old lily. her dad was finishing up his job as a department store santa while her mom played with the girls. >> one of the things lily, sara and grace and my mom did was they all went to their rooms and they hung up paintings and pictures all over their rooms, all over their walls. >> reporter: the walls of their new home, a waterfront victorian house in stanford, connecticut. badger moved there last fall
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with her girls. she and husband matthew had been separated three years but remained good friends. >> reporter: what floor was your bedroom on? >> my bedroom was on the second floor in the front of the house. and on the third floor were three little bedrooms, and those three bedrooms was all pink and white -- >> reporter: perfect little girls' rooms? >> that's what i thought. >> reporter: the house was being renovated by badger's long-time friend, contractor recina. lately the two had become ro mantically involved. badger put her girls to bed around 9:00 p.m. >> so i laid down with them and just chatted and talked, you know, told them i loved them. >> reporter: with the girls tucked in, badger and vorcina
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sent the next several hours wrapping presents just before they headed to bed around 3:00 a.m. they noticed some ashes on the hearth in front of the fireplace. the last log had been placed on the fire six or seven hours earlier. >> mike started cleaning up those ashes on the hearth, put them in a brown bag that was like a shopping bag, like a fancy craft paper bag. i watched him take them with his hand, the shovel, and put them into the bag and then take -- i watched him put his hands in the bag. >> reporter: so he's putting his hands in the bag too feel -- >> to make sure there's nothing on fire in the bag. i mean, you know, if you're going to clean up something like that, you better make damn sure that there's no fire going on. >> reporter: so the ashes in that brown bag were then placed where? >> they were placed on top of one of the plastic bins that we had brought in. and that bin was then placed in
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the mudroom. >> reporter: on her way to bed, badger glanced one more time at the bag of ashes in the mudroom. >> and i remember thinking to myself, i should put that outside. i should put that outside. and then i remember thinking, but i watched him put his hands through it. i watched him wash his hands with the black and the ashes. >> reporter: so you thought there was no danger. >> no danger. >> reporter: no danger. a phrase her father had lived by forever and had taught her. >> we used to call my dad mr. safety man. he changed the batteries in my fire alarms, you know, every year for me. >> reporter: this house was no exception. as this photo shows, badger placed fire extinguishers in the halls and battery-operated smoke d detectors in the rooms, which
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badger said had been tested. >> i woke up choking. i couldn't breathe, choking. and i realized there was a fire. >> reporter: did you hear smoke detectors, anything going off in that house? >> nothing. it was silent. it was the scariest silence. >> reporter: so you got out through the window. >> i got out through the window, i ran to the edge of my house, and i looked down to the left. and there i saw a little bit of flame but mostly just sparks, sparks, sparks everywhere. >> reporter: coming out of what? >> it was near where the electricity goes into the house where the meter is. so that location is also very close to the mudroom. so i had to make a decision because the windows there were my mom and dad's windows, so i had to decide, do i go in and
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save them or do i go save my children? and so i ran the other way to save my children. so i scrambled up the scaffolding to get to grace's window and i opened that window, and the smoke that hit me, it was just the blackest, like an ocean. it was twirling and there was embers and all kinds of stuff in it, and i kept trying to hold my breath and put my head in, and i did that like three or four times and i couldn't get in. i couldn't get in the window. >> reporter: when you opened the window, did you get a glimpse of any of your girls? >> no. no, it was so black. it was the blackest smoke i've
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ever seen. no. if i could have seen them, i would have gone in. i mean -- it's impossible to describe how it is that you can't go in and save your own children, but i couldn't get through that smoke. i couldn't. i couldn't. i knew i would die. and i also remember thinking that i had to stay alive because no one else was there to tell them where they were if the firemen came, to tell them where to go and look for them and save them. >> reporter: this video from a neighbor's cell phone catches the intensity of the fire and the impossible task facing madonna badger. >> and i finally went down, and i thought maybe i would see them, that they were just in the backyard, you know, with my mom and dad.
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but they weren't. >> it is tough to take. we're going to take a break here, and when we come back, the questions that madonna badger is left with following her staggering loss. we lost our edge. well today, there's a new new york state. one that's working to attract businesses and create jobs. a place where innovation meets determination... and businesses lead the world. the new new york works for business. find out how it can work for yours at thenewny.com. anti-aging cream undeniably. it creamed unbelievably a $500 cream and now women have made regenerist microsculpting cream also unscented. women love it. in original and also fragrance-free. [ chuckles ] ♪
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days, including, we should note, her anger over her lingering questions about the investigation into that house fire. here now, part 2 of her conversation with matt lauer. >> reporter: early on christmas morning, a few hours after madonna badger was brought to the emergency room, she finally learned the terrible truth. who told you? >> the doctor that was on duty. it was a brand new doctor, and she took mike's hand and she took my hand and put them together, you know, and she said -- and she held them, and she said, your three children are gone and probably your mom and dad, but we don't know that for certain. and then, my god, i couldn't believe it. >> reporter: badger spent days in the hospital overcome with grief. only later did she learn that just the day after the fire, her house had been demolished. all that was left was a vacant
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lot. >> after the funeral, he had an interview with the police. and the first question they asked me was, why did you have your house torn down? >> reporter: and you said? >> i said, i didn't have my house torn down. what are you talking about? you know. and they said, well, we were told that you had your house torn down. i was like, no. and then i asked them if they could help me get anything out of the house, that i wanted to know where my things were, you know, that were in the house that might have -- >> reporter: been salvageable. >> and they said, we'll find out. and so within a three or four-day period, they brought a bag of stuffed animals, black contractor bag of stuffed animals. >> reporter: that was it. >> and that was it. >> reporter: the state's
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attorney concluded the fire was most often caused by the disposal of fireplace ash, a fact she had blurted out to a fire official the morning of the blaze. do you think that became the entirety of the investigation? do you think they just said, okay, it was those ashes. >> what do you think? >> reporter: do you think it could have been something else? >> yes. >> reporter: and yet, once the house was torn down and the demolition occurred, you really don't have any way to carry on your own investigation into that? >> no. there was no inventory done of my house, they've given me no inventory. the house was torn down. they've taken everything and they don't know where it is. >> reporter: so even what they demolished and took away, they can't tell you where they took it. >> no. they won't tell me. i've asked them. they didn't keep anything forensically out of my house.
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not one fire alarm, not a smoke alarm, not an electrical panel, not the electric meter itself. i have nothing. >> reporter: when you consider that five people died in that building, do you think that's odd? >> i think from everything that everyone has told me, it's very odd. i think it's a crime. >> reporter: this is one of the questions that nags you, and that is, why was that house torn down so quickly? was the investigation thorough? >> investigating fires is very serious business. all of my family members died, five people. how is that not considered a crime scene? i want to know not only what caused my fire, i want to know why didn't the fire alarms go off? the hard-wired alarms had batteries in them. why didn't those go off? how is it that they don't save
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those alarms, because alarms can be tested after the fact. that's what you do in a fire investigation. >> reporter: madonna badger says she still doesn't know who ordered the demolition. she's filed a legal notice that will allow her to sue the city of stanford. >> i don't believe that the ashes caused the fire. it just doesn't seem like a plausible explanation. >> reporter: she says she simply wants answers. those questions that are unanswered, those questions you've told me about, is it imperative for you to answer those questions for lily, grace and sara and your parents? >> absolutely. you know, to honor them with the truth. you know? i believe they deserve that. >> reporter: and if the truth is that a bag filled with some ashes from a fireplace -- >> caused this? >> reporter: -- set their house on fire, that's okay, too, in terms of an answer? >> i mean, absolutely.
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you know, i have to live with them being gone every single day. the cause of that fire is important for me to know in order to somehow find some peace. >> reporter: less than two weeks after the tragedy, madonna badger delivered a touching eulogy for her three little girls. what you wrote about them is beautiful. i have three children, and as i listen to you describe your girls, i think every parent could see some of his or her children in your descriptions. >> my girls are in my heart. they're right here, and this is where they live now. >> reporter: you speak in the present with your daughters and your mom and your dad. consciously or subconsciously?
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>> definitely subconsciously. sometimes consciously. >> reporter: why consciously? >> because i feel them. they're with me. you know, they're not here physically, but i feel them. my children. my mom and dad. >> reporter: do you think you'll always feel that way? >> i hope so. >> so when you ask how someone in that circumstance goes on, there's your answer. a fund has been established in honor of those three little girls, lily, sara and grace. it will support the arts in public elementary schools. there is information about it on our website. while we note this has been extraordinarily tough on those firefighters who responded to that fire that night, we should also note as a legal matter the city of stanford, connecticut has declined to address the specific questions raised by
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madonna badger citing the possibility of a future lawsuit. we will follow up as this progresses. we'll be back with more right after this. itar: upbeat ] [ dog ] we found it together. on a walk, walk, walk. love to walk. yeah, we found that wonderful thing. and you smiled. and threw it. and i decided i would never, ever leave it anywhere. because that wonderful, bouncy, roll-around thing... had made you play. and that... had made you smile. [ announcer ] beneful. play. it's good for you. in here, every powerful collaboration is backed by an equally powerful and secure cloud. that cloud is in the network, so it can deliver all the power of the network itself. bringing people together to develop the best ideas -- and providing the apps and computing power to make new ideas real. it's the cloud from at&t.
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week, and garrett jackson is there in his role as so-called body man. that's political slang for the aide for the candidate. they hear everything, she see everything, and tonight garrett jackson lets us inside his relationship with the man he calls "the gov." >> good morning. it's 5:45 and it's another day on the road. i can't believe the gov is not here. he tries to work out a few days a week, too. usually on the elliptical. since i'm in a motel room every night, i have to write the number of my room on my card. it's time to go get the gov. good morning. >> thank you, sir. >> i really just stumbled into this job. if you would have asked me a few years ago did i think i would be
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right here traveling with a guy who very well could be and hopefully will be the next president of the united states, i would say you're crazy. it's different from the other one! >> welcome on board. here's our kitchen. chex is one of my favorites. cocoa puffs is one of the gov's favorites. it is like groundhog day in the sense you're always up early, you have multiple events every day, then you do it all over again the next day. we're doing a tour of this facility right now. it looks like we're clear. i don't care if people call me body man or what. i know it's confusing to a lot of people. a lot of people think i'm his bodyguard. got it. i've gotten good at taking photos. that's all i do all day long. i know how to use every camera phone, every camera. i'm calling myself a
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professional now. got it. so now i'm doing vog. we're coming to you guys. they've always joked about how i can turn on this great a announcing voice. ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the president of casting, mike live. it's a lot of fun. the gov loves it. sdp >> that's a great voice, isn't it? don't you love it? it's so good. it's so good. >> we know one another very well. i've described him before as an uncle and endearing nephew type relationship. >> governor mitt romney. i'm just a small town kid from a middle class family. this has been an incredible, incredible experience. you can bring it down, you can bring the music down. where are we, in iowa or pennsylvania? >> pennsylvania. >> our famous peanut butter and
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honey sandwich. gov, what is this, like number four today? >> it's number four for me. are you going to cut off the crust today? >> you know me. i like it without the crust. you know me. there you have it, the romney 2012 peanut butter and honey sandwich. >> this is for a real man with crust. >> we're here in cornwall. i have some good photos to tweet out to everyone. i'm there with sharpies. it's key to have the quick sharpie. that's one of my tricks. i'm just there to see that he keeps moving and make sure he's taken care of. i'm also a pilot. ever since i was a little kid, i knew i wanted to be able to fly someday. before i took this job, i came very close to joining the air force. he feels good knowing there are
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always three pilots on board every time he flies. it's about 10:20 at night. just checked into another hampton inn, and i've already written down the number of my hotel room. i'm very blessed that i have this opportunity, and i don't want to let it slip away. so that's what keeps me going. thanks for following me around. good night. >> our thanks, by the way, to garrett jackson and to the romney campaign for letting us tag along for a day. and that's going to be it for us on this day. thank you for being with us on "rock center." i'm brian williams. we hope, of course, you'll join us for nightly news tomorrow evening. good night for now. from all of us in noew york, yor local news begins now. with the spark cash card from capital one,
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