Florida Escapees Back Behind Bars
DON LEMON, CNN ANCHOR: Hello, everyone here. I'm Don Lemon you are in the CNN NEWSROOM. It is top of the hour. We're going to start with this; two killers who slipped out of prison with phony documents are back behind bars right now. They were busted on Saturday evening while hanging out at a hotel at a motel rather in the Florida Pan Handle. But this is not an open and shut case. Today, Florida police want to know who else is involved. Charles Walker and Joseph Jenkins escaped separately and managed to get about 80 miles from the prison. Police found them at the Coconut Grove Motor Inn in Panama City unarmed waiting for a ride. Let's go to CNN's Nick Valencia now watching these developments. He is in Panama City, Florida. So Nick, police say these guys had to have a lot of help during their time on the run. Do they have any names or any leads yet?</s>NICK VALENCIA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hey, Don. And that's where we're going to start. I just got off the phone with the Florida department of law enforcement and they tell me that arrests are imminent. They will be looking at people that helped Charles Walker and Joseph Jenkins avoid being captured while they were on the run. They are also going to look at those people that may have helped Walker and Jenkins get their hands on those forged documents. I want you to take a listen to this press conference held earlier today from the commission of Florida department of law enforcement when he was asked about those forged documents. Take a listen.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There is speculation, an underline speculation, that there was a source for a certain sum of money that these documents could be constructed for $8,000. Whether that's true or not will be determined.</s>VALENCIA: When I talked to the FDLE, they wanted to stress to our viewers that that is the investigation is very preliminary to the very early stages investigating how much the documents may have cost. They also said that this is not the first time. Others inmates have tried to used a fraudulent schemes to escape and said other two cases unsuccessfully have been tried. So that leaves a lot of people here to wonder, you know, if they've had a couple of years to look at these cases and know that these fraudulent schemes were out there, why haven't they been able to stop this time around -- Don.</s>LEMON: You know what, Nick? These men were on the run for what, three weeks. Who in the prison system is in trouble because of this escape? And what's being done to make sure it doesn't happen again?</s>VALENCIA: Well, you'd be surprised. When we talked to the department of corrections on Friday, I'd asked the press information officer, who's going to be to blame here? Who's going to get in trouble? She said no one is to blame here. We followed all the proper procedures. We don't have legal stature to push back against the courts. The courts punted back saying, you know, it's not some high-tech scheme here, some high-tech analysis that we do at the court. We process the paperwork and we push it on and the department of corrections are the ones that ordered it. But also, you know it's the state's attorney's office that also are embarrassed by the situation. They're supposed to be the authority when it comes to this. And you know, they don't want to take any responsibility or any other culpability when it comes to these forged documents -- Don.</s>LEMON: Nick Valencia, appreciate your reporting. Thank you very much. You know, one reason those men were able to slip out of that prison is they had very real-looking signatures on some phony documents. I want you to take a look at this. It is a signature of Judge Belvin Perry of Florida's Ninth Judicial Court. If that name is familiar, it's because Judge Perry presided over one of the country's highest profile for her trial, the trial of Casey Anthony. His name is on those papers that the killers used to fake their way to freedom. And live in Florida right now, in Orlando, as a matter of fact, is judge Belvin Perry. So, judge, you have seen those forged signatures. Are they even good fakes to you?</s>JUDGE BELVIN PERRY, FLORIDA'S NINTH JUDICIAL COURT: Well, Don, they are excellent fakes because it appears to me that what they did was looked at documents that were probably on the Casey Anthony case and cut and paste my signature and pasted on new documents. So they were actually genuine-looking documents.</s>LEMON: OK. Just to be, for my own edification and for some members of the audience, these papers never came across your desk?</s>PERRY: These papers never hit my desk because number one, the case were never assigned to me, Don. I never had anything to do with Walker or Jenkins. They were cases that were assigned to other judges.</s>LEMON: So no one ever said hey, judge, did you sign these papers? No one contacted you? Wrote you? Called you? E-mailed you?</s>PERRY: Don, more than likely, what happened was somebody appeared in the clerk's office, dropped them in a box, they were processed as they ordinarily do process documents that was absolutely no contact with my office. No one even checked to see if, in fact, the cases were assigned to me and they went on about their merry way and were transmitted to the department of corrections. And the department of corrections got them and acted upon them.</s>LEMON: So, obviously, there is something needs to be done. How does this make you feel, I mean, your name was used to escape, your signature. Obviously, you are not abuse by. Are you angry? Are you going to fight for change? What?</s>PERRY: Well, am I angry? No. I don't like it. It didn't make me angry. But let's face reality. When your named in documents that you've signed plastered on the internet for anybody and everybody to see and someone with basic knowledge can paste and cut your signature, it doesn't surprise me that it did happen. It was just a matter of time. It shows that we need to do a little bit more in authentication of documents. And that's a process that we're going to start doing now. Remember, we have a fragmented system here in the state of Florida. The court and the clerk of court are two separate offices. They are not joint offices ran by the courts.</s>LEMON: Well, that sounds like someone needs to make sure that you guys are in communication with each other, at least. I mean, if this is an indication of that, I don't know what is. My question, though, is this whole incident put eggs in the face of Florida law enforcement. Everyone is pointing fingers saying, you know, not my fault pointing the other direction. Should anyone particular agency stand up and say hey, look, we screwed up. The buck stops with us?</s>PERRY: Well, I think what we need to do is wait until the investigation is over with to see actually what happened in this particular case. People tend to forget. There was Jeffrey Forbes who filed his documents in January of 2011. One, a reduction of his sentence using falsified documents that bared the signature of another judge and had his sentenced reduced so he was eligible for release in 2016. I think once we find out what happened with that one and trace who knew what, when and where, then you can make some decisions as to if anybody is to blame for any of this.</s>LEMON: Judge Belvin Perry, thank you for your time. We appreciate it.</s>PERRY: Thank you, Don. All right. In other news now, people get caught with guns and knives at the airport. It happens all of the time, unfortunately. But this is over the top. Here's what authorities of New York's JFK are saying. The airport says that a Long Island man tried to board a JetBlue flight yesterday carrying a bag filled with more than a dozen knives, five pairs of scissors, more than a dozen lighters and other so-called implements of destruction. 'The Daily News" says Timothy Schiavo admitted to owning the stock in the bag. He is charged with criminal possession of a weapon. The shutdown is over but the screaming over Obamacare may have just started. Now, there are calls to fire a member of the president's cabinet. That's next. And in Australia, it's up in flames. Over 50 separate fires burning. Some of them on the out skirts of Sydney. Live report just ahead here on CNN.