Glenn Beck (CNN) Speaks with Lloyd Saager

August 17, 2006

Lloyd Saager, he called me up this morning on the radio show when we were talking about this. Tragically his 2-year-old daughter, Jordan, was murdered in 2000. He was the lead suspect until years later his baby sitter was convicted. He lost his kids for over a year.

Lloyd, how are you, sir?

LLOYD SAAGER, FALSELY ACCUSED OF DAUGHTER`S MURDER: Pretty good, sir.

BECK: Is this a -- is this a tough day for you? Or how do you feel today, seeing this same story, you know, go out with JonBenet`s parents?

SAAGER: I feel relieved for Mr. Ramsey and the late Mrs. Ramsey. I suffered through their same emotions of fear and terror.

BECK: Yes. You thought that your daughter had a disease, because she was bruising. And then you get a call in the morning that she`s going to the hospital, and she`s -- when you get there she`s dead, right?

SAAGER: Yes, sir.

BECK: Tell me the story.

SAAGER: I was working in Dallas about an hour and a half away from my home, and my wife had dropped my daughter off at the baby sitter`s that morning so she could go to work.

And I would say probably about 1 p.m. I was called by the family practitioner`s nurse, to say that she had fallen of the bars at Burger King and that she was hurt.

And immediately, I asked how bad was she hurt, and she said, "Well, we wouldn`t have been calling you if it wasn`t serious." So I got in my truck and I started heading for home. And halfway home I called the emergency room in Gainesville where we were currently living, and her family doctor got on the phone and said she had passed away 20 minutes prior.

BECK: Holy cow. So now that night they pull you into an interrogation room and you all of a sudden realize whoa, whoa, whoa, I think I need an attorney here. How -- what was it like when your -- I mean that day you find out your daughter is dead, and then all of the sudden they turn to you and say looks like you. What does that feel like?

SAAGER: It`s horrible. It`s -- it`s -- you want to feel hurt and pain, the pain that you should be feeling, and you can`t. It`s just terror.

BECK: Wait, wait. How do you mean. You mean -- at that moment the pain of your daughter`s death kind of goes away?

SAAGER: Exactly. Exactly. I couldn`t -- I couldn`t hardly even focus on it. I was more focused on defending myself.

BECK: So maybe -- so when we saw Patsy Ramsey -- you know, I`m fuzzy on this. I have to go back and look at the tape. But I remember feeling that maybe that was part of it, is it didn`t seem real. It didn`t seem genuine. It didn`t seem like she was mourning enough or whatever. You`re saying that that goes away automatically, because you`re in full fledged save your life mode.

SAAGER: Exactly. And you`re also in shock. I mean, there`s a lot of shock involved with what goes on when you lose a child. But yes, I mean we weren`t -- it`s -- in a lot of people`s words we were never given the right to grieve as parents, as we should have.

BECK: Right. Did you -- how much did the frustration -- I would think that I would be so angry that I would be in a room and they would say that to me, my head would explode. I`d need the duct tape to wrap my head so I could stay to them, "Stop wasting time. I didn`t do it. Go catch the killer." Did you have that frustration?

SAAGER: Exactly. And honest -- to be honest with you, I was not interrogated very long at all. Actually I was asked a few preliminary questions. What they did was focused on questioning my wife, who was questioned for about nine hours that night, the night that her death was ruled a homicide. And so it was my wife that went through you that hell.

BECK: But you lost your two kids for a whole year.

SAAGER: Right. Exactly.

BECK: I can`t imagine what that is. Just destroyed your family from six ways to Sunday on this horrible, horrible tragedy.

So let me ask you. Because you`ve got to be a better person than I am. O.J. Simpson, do you think he did it?

SAAGER: I don`t know. I mean...

BECK: Do you really -- do you really feel that way? When you see things on TV, can you really get to a point where you`re like, "You know what, I`m not going to judge the guy"?

SAAGER: It`s the media is the reason that I -- I will not rush to judgment.

BECK: Good for you. Good for you.

SAAGER: Because you never can tell. What you only see in the media - - I mean, look at the O.J. Simpson case. What`s more compelling in media than to blame the ex-NFL football star, the Heisman Trophy winner, as opposed to a common thief who may have just wandered in her house and killed her?

BECK: Lloyd, best of luck for you and your family. Sorry for your loss all the way around. Thanks a lot.

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0608/17/gb.01.html