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September 15, 2005 - 20:00:00 ET

TRANSCRIPT.

NANCY GRACE, HOST: Tonight, hard evidence of sex assaults, robberies, gunfire and cops turning a blind eye at the New Orleans convention center. Why is it all being kept secret? Why is there no attempt to document the wrongdoing and apprehend the perpetrators? Hurricane Katrina victims suffered countless assaults while under government protection from Katrina, a total breakdown of law and order.

GRACE: Right now, to Will Haygood with "The Washington Post." Will, for those people that have not read your article, what happened in the convention center?
WILL HAYGOOD, "WASHINGTON POST": There were sexual assaults, reports of sexual assaults. There was gunfire. There were people who died. And it was a fairly horrific five days for those people.

GRACE: Mr. Haygood, correct me if I`m wrong, but doesn`t your article state that there were 250 National Guard troops there in one of the halls of the convention center?

HAYGOOD: Yes, there were, and apparently, they felt that it was not - - it was not prudent for them to go into the hall to try to calm the violence. You know, that was something that...

GRACE: Not prudent. Not prudent. I thought that`s why we had the National Guard, Mr. Haygood. Now, also according to your article, the National Guard actually barricaded themselves into one of these halls, so the people on the outside that didn`t have food, didn`t have water, needed protection, couldn`t get in where they were!

HAYGOOD: Right. Right. And you know -- and there was much worry, of course, amongst mothers and fathers who were anxious to get food and medicine and help for their -- for their children. There were a lot of children there. There were a lot of young single mothers there who had children.

GRACE: Well, also, your article outlines gang rapes, sexual assaults, gunfire, actual deaths, murders there in the convention center, with the National Guard holed up in one of the halls!

HAYGOOD: Right. Right. That happened. At the Superdome, there was -- there was a way to check for weapons as people entered the Superdome Sunday. But at the convention center, there was no such plan set up, and - - you know, and so it was willy-nilly, folks rushed in there. They were frightened. You know, many were scared. It was dark Monday night. You know, it was still raining. You know, flood waters were everywhere. People had lost relatives trying to make that trek there. And it was just a state of sheer pandemonium.

GRACE: Twenty thousand people together in the convention center. We now have learned through Mr. Haygood`s article that rival gang members from various housing projects were all in the convention center together, with young girls, single mothers, little children, the elderly. At one point, Haygood writes, they broke into the liquor and beverage area and got out hundreds of cases of liquor and beer.
DR. GREG HENDERSON, TREATED KATRINA VICTIMS AT NEW ORLEANS CONVENTION CENTER: HENDERSON: Well, I mean, Anderson was very accurate, and everybody else who`s told that story, about basically what happened, you know, during the days at the convention center is just right on. I mean, it was just -- you know, I recently referred to it, it`s as if the entire city of New Orleans seemed to have vomited up its entire population into one place, and that was the convention center. All mass of humanity was just collected there, looking for some sort of help.

GRACE: What crimes did you hear about there in the convention center?

HENDERSON: ... I mean, basically, you can -- it was one continuous hell, but there were two types of hell. There was the hell that was during the day. And the hell during the day was the hell of trying to administer medical care to these people. But then, almost as if it was a Stephen King novel, there was a hell that descended upon the night, when, at nighttime, the gangs -- and indeed, that`s what happened, what I have heard that has happened, is basically, the gangs of New Orleans decided to occupy the convention center and make that their turf and make that their operating territory.

Now, they knew they couldn`t do much during the day because, you know, there were some people watching. But at nighttime, there wasn`t any lights. And the way they would operate -- and this is the way it was told to me by the patients I saw during the day -- is they`d spend the day sort of eyeing and picking out their prey, if you will, young women, some as young as 6 years old, and figuring out that, That`s the one I want to rape tonight.

And then when the sun went down, they`d take their weapons and they`d go out into the crowd and they`d start firing up in the crowd, and that would cause a lot of pandemonium and take everybody`s eye off the ball and everybody would go hysterical. And during that mayhem, they would grab the women that they wanted to assault, drag them into the convention center and rape them, and sometimes they would kill them and sometimes they wouldn`t. One particular incident that just murdered me, practically, was -- because I`ve got a 6-year-old daughter and a 10-year-old daughter, was Wednesday night, I heard a report of a 6-year-old that had been raped and died during the trauma of the rape.

And it`s so -- like I said, it was just -- I mean, Anderson tells it well. You know, it just was hell. It was hell from start to finish, but there was a daytime hell and there was a nighttime hell, and the -- it`s -- the daytime hell is when I think I saw the best of humanity trying to help each other. And the nighttime hell is when I saw what true human evil can be.

GRACE: To Anderson Cooper. Anderson, all those nights you were reporting to us about the waters rising and all the human tragedy you were seeing, we had no idea what was happening at night inside the convention center.

COOPER: Yes, only people who were there, and people like Dr. Henderson, who made trips into there at great risk to himself. I mean, just -- Dr. Henderson is very modest. This is a man who was here for a conference. He wasn`t, you know, sent by FEMA. He wasn`t sent -- ordered to come here to help. He was here, just trapped in the city. He`d gotten his family out and decided, You know what? I`m just going to -- I`m going to do what I can. He helped out the New Orleans Police Department and he decided to help out the citizens at the convention center, to do whatever he could, so...

I just don`t think this should be swept away. I just don`t think that the people who were there -- I think they deserve to have their stories told and for this to be studied and looked at and remembered so that it never, ever happens again. I mean, why were those people told to go there? Why weren`t New Orleans police able to, you know, try to control it more, or at least get help from the state or the federal government. GRACE: You know, Haygood writes of cops going into the bathrooms at the convention center, stripping of their uniforms, throwing their badges in the trash so no one would identify them as police officersGRACE: You know, Haygood writes of cops going into the bathrooms at the convention center, stripping of their uniforms, throwing their badges in the trash so no one would identify them as police officers. GRACE: Twenty thousand people evacuated into the convention center. That convention center can hold over 100,000 people. So why were rapes, gang rapes, shootings, assaults, even murders allowed to happen in the convention center? Everybody keeps saying this is America. We know this is America, but things like this aren`t supposed to happen.

I want to go straight to a man who was an eyewitness to what went down in the convention center. Leon Doby, what did you see?

LEON DOBY, SPENT THREE DAYS AT CONVENTION CENTER: Oh, ma`am, I saw everything, from stabbings to fights to women hollering, being dragged off in bathrooms. I like to call it the mouth of hell. That`s what the convention center was.

GRACE: Is it true that police would just drive by and keep on going?

DOBY: Drive by. They did at least throw out one case of 24 bottles of water when they passed. That`s all.

GRACE: You were there with your daughters, ages 1 and 3. You took them in a crate that you pulled behind you through the water, first to the Superdome and then turned away to the convention center. How long were you in there?

DOBY: Oh, about three days.

GRACE: Mr. Doby, what would everybody do when they would see a lady screaming, getting dragged off by one of these gang members into the bathroom?

DOBY: Well, all I can say is, ma`am, people were really worried about theirselves. Like everyone was saying, they had a lot of single mothers there with their kids, trying to do the best they can, as well as single fathers trying to do the best as they can, as well as couples. We was just trying to do the best we could to get over that. But I have to resent the word "refugees." We`re not refugees. We were people just trying to get over a tremendous storm that just tore us up.

GRACE: When you look back and realize these ladies were getting dragged off to be raped and nobody did anything, how do you feel?

DOBY: I feel horrible. I have two daughters who I love dearly, and I would never want nothing like that to happen to any of them, so...

GRACE: What were you afraid of? Why were you afraid to help? Because you had your two girls?

DOBY: Right, a 1-year-old and a 3-year-old. If I`d have let their hand go, they would have wound up being lost somewhere. Then I would really have been in bad shape.

GRACE: Mr. Doby, what was the National Guard doing holed up in one of the -- like, a banquet hall?

DOBY: I don`t know. I don`t know, ma`am.

GRACE: Did you try to get in there to where they were?

DOBY: I asked a few of them a couple of questions, but you know, they wasn`t in no kind of mood to answer no kind of questions or anything.

GRACE: Yes, I guess they weren`t.
GRACE: Doctor Henderson, do we even know how many people were killed in the convention center?

HENDERSON: You know, I can`t give you a specific number. I have heard -- I know it is at least 30 to 40 people.

GRACE: Oh, good Lord in heaven!

HENDERSON: I know that...

GRACE: And that`s over the space of...

HENDERSON: I know that -- I have heard -- again, sort of like you, I`ve had confirmed from so many different sources that there have been at least (30 to 40) bodies on the second floor of the convention center because that -- that became the de facto morgue of the convention center, and that`s by people who died of natural causes, et cetera. And even though I`m a pathologist, I am not a forensic pathologist.

HENDERSON: And I think it`s going to be the job of the forensic pathologists to sort through, OK, who died a traumatic death based upon a crime, and let`s start tracking them down.

GRACE: In the convention center. And Dr. Henderson, we got some photos of these dead bodies there at the convention center, and we are not -- not -- showing them. But you can look at them and tell these people did not die naturally. Their bodies are all contorted, and they`re all bloody. It`s horrible!
GRACE: Doctor, do we even know how many people were killed in the convention center?

HENDERSON: You know, I can`t give you a specific number. I have heard -- I know it is at least 30 to 40 people.

GRACE: Oh, good Lord in heaven!

HENDERSON: I know that...

GRACE: And that`s over the space of...

HENDERSON: I know that -- I have heard -- again, sort of like you, I`ve had confirmed from so many different sources that there have been at least 30 to 40 bodies on the second floor of the convention center because that -- that became the de facto morgue of the convention center, and that`s by people who died of natural causes, et cetera. And even though I`m a pathologist, I am not a forensic pathologist.

GRACE: Well, you know...

HENDERSON: And I think it`s going to be the job of the forensic pathologists to sort through, OK, who died a traumatic death based upon a crime, and let`s start tracking them down.

GRACE: In the convention center. And Dr. Henderson, we got some photos of dead bodies there at the convention center, and we are not -- not -- showing them. But you can look at them and you can tell these people did not die naturally. Their bodies are all contorted, and they`re all bloody. It`s horrible!
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