good morning, america. we have breaking news this morning. deliberate action. malaysia's high minister now saying what happened to flight 370 was no accident. so who took control of the plane? was it a hijacker. police are intensifying their investigation of the pilots overnight plus the brand-new air and sea search for the missing plane, where they are looking now. also this morning, person of interest. it's a man arrested in west virginia connected to serial killings in a neighboring state.

the possible break in a case that made resident as parade to even open their front doors in the d.c. suburbs. new developments in a notorious kidnapping this morning. did this woman play a role in snatching paul fronczak from a hospital in chicago 50 years ago? a fresh clue to a decades old mystery. and going ape. a rare c-section brings this tiny baby gorilla into the world where vets are keeping a close eye on her after medical problems. we'll tell you how she'soing right now. hey, good morning. as we come on the air there are late breaking developments in the mystery of flight 370. malaysia's prime minister making his first comments about the plane saying the investigation has now entered a, quote, new phase. according to the prime minister, the latest information confirms

that whatever happened on board was adeliberate action. he said the aircraft communications systems were intentionally disabled which is why investigators are looking into whether this was a car hijacking on plane or a rogue pilot whose motivation remain unclear. >> initially there was word the plane had been up in the air for four hours leaving search crews with a 2400-mile radius to search. now it's up to eight hours expanding it to 4,000. crews are concentrating are two corridors, first the border of pakistan to northern thailand, the southern the indian ocean. a huge parameter. earlier this morning in hi news conference we turn to abc's david kerley. good morning. >> reporter: good morning, bianna. this does confirm our reporting which narrows the theories of what happened.

it now appears it was taken over either by a rogue pilot or it was hijacked, as you mentioned and did stay in the air much longer than we thought. it's now clear say investigators communications gears switched off shall the changing direction of flight 370 appear to all be done on purpose by someone at the controls. >> this movement consistent with deliberate actions by someone on the plane. >> reporter: this is the latest, a 12:41 departure from kuala lumpur to beijing but just past 26 minutes in, a data signaling system is shut off. then 40 minutes in at 1:21 in the morning, the 777's location transmitter also shut off now confirmed, the plane does turn around heading back across malaysia and is last seen on radar at 2:15 a.m. but this morning, we know because the jet was signaling a satellite each hour it turned again, either north or south and

flew for another six hours at least. 3600 miles. a source and experts tell abc news the southern route is the most likely uncovered by radar putting the malaysian jet somewhere off australia. why and who did this? one unnamed malaysian official is quoted as saying it's conclusive it's a hijacking. the prime minister, however, did not agree. >> despite reports that the plane was hijacked, i wish to be very clear. we are still investigating all possibilities as so what caused mh 370 to deviate from its original flight path. >> reporter: and that includes the possibility that one or both of the pilots went rogue turning off that communications gear and turning around. we only know how far it flew because of the satellite pigs and we and the world's pilots only learned a couple of days

ago that that system cannot be shut off by a pilot. so the search of the south china sea which is north of malaysia has now been called off. no reason to look there. a new search will undoubtedly begin off australia, but even though we know when the jet last pinged the satellite, it could have flown for another hour or so so there's still a bigger area to search, but not as big as what it could be. dan? >> huge area to search and this mystery just deepens. david kerley, thank you for your continuing coverage. this new information gives new urgency, of course, to the investigation into the pilots. if fact, just hours ago they arrived at the home of the plane's captain and abc's bob woodruff is in the malaysian capital of kuala lumpur with the latest. bob, good morning. >> reporter: well, good morning, dan. you know, this news is just sweeping across this country of malaysia right now. this has been going on for seven days now, the people have been criticizing the police for not searching through the homes of any of the pilots or crew members. well, that's changing today.

while search teams continue looking for the plane, the police here are trying to learn more about the crew members and passengers including the pilots. so far for the first time this week they searched the home of the pilot, captain zaharie ahmad shah. abc's gloria riviera was there at his gate watching the search. >> it was just after 2:42 when a white van came up to the gates, was carrying two officers in plainclothes. said they were from malaysia's police headquarters after that a police car with two in uniforms came in spent two hours here. upscale neighborhoods and neighbors say it's a tight-knit community. >> reporter: in his home he has his own flight simulator. also on the manifest is fariq abdul hamid, now engaged to be married. i visited his house yesterday. no one answered the door. everyone i spoke to said nice things, especially this malaysian singer, one of his closest friends.

she grew up in the same hometown in panang. >> he is a nice guy, truly young. i don't think he's involved. >> reporter: as the prime minister spoke today, family members watched it closely hoping for good news. this father's 29-year-old son is on that plane. his hope now is that he is still alive. one of the questions this morning is why did it take so much time for the government to reveal this kind of information? well, it's been told by many people that if they did, people around the world have an idea where the plane may be and they can stench. they could look for any signs of it. today the prime minister said that is the reason why they did finally release it today. bianna? >> a lot of people probably saying that's not good enough. thank you. despite all the new information, there are still many unanswered questions about what happened on board flight 370. and for that we turn to abc's pierre thomas who has more on the investigation and how it's proceeding from washington. pierre, good morning to you. does it surprise you it took

this long, eight days, for investigators to search the pilot's home? did they waste valuable time? >> reporter: sources are saying they clearly do and the pilots would have been focus number one, something you needed to jump on early in the investigation and quite frankly this is the quandary that u.s. law enforcement finds itself in. the fbi is not on the ground in nevaeh and have no capacity to investigate. >> so what is us airways law enforcement going to encourage them to look at? >> reporter: i expect them have them focus on the mental health of the piles and crew. they are the people that had easy access to the plane, control of the plane so they want to know was there something going on in their personal lives, mental health issues that needed to be resolved? that would be job number one. >> reporter: the prime minister called it a deliberate act. what are your sources telling us? >> reporter: so far they found

nothing like that and one source pointed out a number. the plane had ample opportunity, the pilots were -- whoever was in control of that plane had ample opportunity to hit a populated area with a plane fuel of fuel so less concerned about that. on the other hand, they say the fact this plane was in the air so long and we still don't know where it is, huge problem. >> a huge mystery and, of course, ovr our thoughts and prayers with are the family and loved ones of those passengers, not knowing what happened. we appreciate your time this morning. pierre. >> dan? >> let's bring in john nance who is a former commercial pilot and joins us from seattle. john, good morning to you. we're now looking at a huge swath of the planet earth that needs to be searched here. even though they've narrowed it down to two corridors we're still talking about huge, huge sections to search. how can they begin to do this? >> you do this like eating an elephant. one bite at a time, in other words, you're going to have to

basically decide what your search grid is and they're going to have to go at it just slice by slice by slice and the opportunity to be able to find this airplane, if it really is in the water, dan, is very, very small. >> if it's in deep water in some points of the social several miles down even if they found it how would they retreat it? >> it's going to take a lot of special equipment. there's not all that much of it on the planet. you'll have to go down to 14 though thousand, 15,000, 16,000 feet and retrieving it will be quite a project akin to finding the "titanic" and be able to bring some stuff up. first of all they'll have to locate it, a needle in the haystack. >> you have been in the aviation business for decades now. does your gut tell you anything about what happened here? >> yeah, with these supposed facts as long as they don't change about the sequence and the shutting off of radios and so on, did this is a hijack but probably an internal hijacking, in other words one of the pilots. it could be external but whoever

was in control of the airplane after the turn knew what they were doing. they took it up to 45,000 feet. the chilling possibility there is it was for the purpose of killing the passengers. >> killing possibility, indeed, and we keep saying this but it remains true, this is a mystery and an unprecedented one. john nance we really appreciate your guidance. thank you. we want to check the other headlines and for that as always it's mr. ron claiborne. ron. good morning. >> hi there dan. good morning, everyone. there were no megawinners in the huge mega millions lottery. the numbers drawn friday that no one picked were 7, 20, 40, 54, 69 and a megaball of 12. however, you have a shot to win, even bigger with tuesday's jackpot at an estimated $400 million, the odds, 1 in 259 million. california fire crews are battling a raging wildfire that torched nearly 150 acres of bone-dry land about 50 miles northeast of los angeles.

nearly 200 firefighters were called in to battle friday's blaze. that is still not under control. two super scooper planes drew water from nearby lake -- a nearby lake to keep the fire from reaching nearby ranches. luckily, no one has had to be evacuated. and take a look at this new source surveillance video that shows the moment that the deadly explosion leveled two apartment buildings her in new york city. you see grocery flying off store chefs inside the store, a block away. the bodies of eight people meanwhile, who were killed in the blast have been pulled from the debris and investigators discovered natural gas underground which supports the theory at least the powerful explosion was caused by a gas leak. and in tennessee, teenagers on a recent fishing trip reeled in a little more than they expected. well, a lot more. call this the catch of the day, two bags filled with $10,000 in stolen cash. the money was colored red from a dye pack that exploded in the bag. police believe the loot was stolen during a bank heist back

in december. the suspects in that robbery told investigators allegedly that they dumped the money in the lake and that's exactly where the fishermen found and pulled up that sack of money. and finally on a personal note, just want to congratulate my colleague, just five feet away, dan harris on the publication of his new book. >> oh, thank you. >> "10% happier" but want to reveal my new book is copping out later this week, as you see there, "11% happier." you can buy both books but if you only buy one, you do the math. figure it out for yourself and for a limited time only, if you buy my book, you get this collectible mug, i'm 11% happier. >> because of what -- >> you get the first collectible mug. >> legal papers will be arriving soon. >> amazing to witness. the covers look very similar, don't they? yeah.

allegedly. here, you give this to dan. >> congratulations. are you going to sign it for him? >> thanks, ron. accomplished author indeed. >> thank you, plagiarism. there is a new development in a high-profile serial murder case. police are investigating whether a man in custody on a weapons charge has a connection to the series of shockings killings in alexandria, virginia. his resemblance to the man police are looking for is uncanny. take a look and abc's linzie janis is here with the details. they really do look alike in the sketches, linzie. >> good morning. these murders inside -- they're hoping police have their man but authorities are stressing that this is still an unongoing investigation and that the people of alexandria should continue to be aware of their personal safety. alexandria police tell abc news while investigating the three brutal murders haunting the suburban d.c. community, anonymous tips led them to this man, charles severance, a

convicted felon he was arrested in west virginia fry for weapons violations. >> they're trying to put together the pieces of the puss toll directly tie him to the murder of one of these three individuals. >> reporter: in a news release alexandria police stress it is premature to name him as the only possible suspect. but many here in this d.c. suburb are pointing out that severance's booking photo bears a striking resemblance to this sketch the man responsible for the shooting death of ruthanne lodato. in february lodato was gunned down after opening her door to a strange man. her caretaker was also shot but survived. >> the caretaker may end up being a direct eyewitness to the case. >> reporter: in fact, it was the caretaker's description that helped police create this sketch. in a february news conference, alexandria police linked lodato's murdering to the slay of ron kirby, a local transportation official and the

2003 of a police chief's wife, nancy dunning. >> the similars and unusual nature of all three shootings occurring in alexandria require the police department to consider the possibility that all the cases are linked together. >> everybody is talking about it. i mean, that's the only thing that it's really affecting everybody and nobody knows the facts. >> reporter: well, here are the reasons police think that the murders are connected. the victims were all involved in the community, all were shot in their hopes during the day and within two miles of each other. finally, the bullets used in all three murders are similar. dan and bianna, the man that they have in custody, severance, one interesting thing about him. he ran for mayor twice in the community so he's known to the community. >> well, if this is closure at least the residents can sleep better. >> but again police stressing still not have connected him. >> linzie, thank you. >> i'm 11% happier drinking out of this mug. >> we are going to shift gears away from math.

to a medical story involving this little girl, the tiny baby gorilla with a knitted hat on. a special delivery at the zoo in san diego, born by c-section which is extremely rare in the animal kingdom and abc's sara haines is wearing a matching dress this morning is here with the story. good morning. >> in honor of our baby little girl, she was a very special delivery and hard fought one at that. although c-sections account for one in three human births in the u.s. they are practically unheard of when it comes to gorillas. it's the incredible video that's captivating people around the world. the birth of this baby gorilla, a miracle in the animal kingdom. the video filmed by the san diego zoo showing an emergency c-section performed not on a human, but on a gorilla. a mommy san diego zoo's first-time mother in labor for 12 brutal hours when unexpected complications forced doctors to take drastic measures in an attempt to save both lives.

>> the c-section was the right decision. we think that the health of the fetus would have been compromised if we delayed the surgery any longer. >> reporter: c-sections may be an ordinary procedure for humans but they are extremely rare for gorillas and this is the first ever for san diego zoo. the baby girl gorilla barely survived and is not out of the woods yet. just two days into her fragile life after struggling to breathe, one of her lungs collapsed. doctors rushed to save her in a grueling surgery. the procedure considered a success but she remains in critical condition. doctors are monitoring her around the clock. >> she's extremely strong. she can grasp. she kicks. she looks around. she could hold her own head up which is pretty amazing. >> now she's showing a lot of progress although still getting oxygen and she's starting to breathe as her lungs get stronger. >> so cute. >> absolutely cute. >> i love your matching dress. >>