us. i'm don lemon in tampa, florida, where preparations are under way right now for monday's cnn tea party republican debate. we begin with the tenth anniversary of 9/11. ♪ in the arms of the angels >> the nation, if not the entire world, pauses to mourn the nearly 3,000 people who lost their lives ten years ago on the morning of september 11th. former presidents bush and clinton were in shanksville, pennsylvania, just this afternoon to dedicate a memorial to the heroic passengers of united airlines flight 93. their sacrifice on that extraordinary day, no doubt saved countless other lives. president obama has declared this weekend national days of prayer and remembrance. he and the first lady spent some time today at arlington national cemetery. they visited a section where service members killed in iraq and afghanistan are buried. just a short distance away at the pentagon, former president bush and his wife laid a wreath of flowers at a site known as the 9/11 stone. 184 people died at the pentagon on 9/11 when american airlines flight 77 smashed into the building. ♪ that is st. patrick's cathedral in manhattan, a service today for the 343 new york city firefighterers who lost their lives at the world trade center when the twin towers collapsed. ground zero where the twin towers once stood beyond the skyline is now a large plaza. home security secretary janet napolitano walked through it ahead of tomorrow's formal dedication. let's get right to today's dedication ceremony in shanksville, pennsylvania. cnn's david mattingly joins us live from that site. david, thanks for joining us tonight. you were on that field ten years ago today. there it seems to be a very different place with a different message, quite a different message. >> reporter: that's right, don, ten years ago, this was a site of a terrible tragedy of violent terrorist attacks. there was a great deal of anger, fear, uncertainty, all sorts of things happening at that time. today this is a field dedicated to courage and to those people onboard that flight who made the decision to rise up and try and take back their plane and fight their hijackers. it was an emotional day for everyone here, not just for the families of flight 93 but for former president george w. bush as well. listen. >> for generations people will study the flight -- the story of flight 93. they will learn that individual choices make a difference. that love and sacrifice can try uch over evil and hate. and that what happens above this pennsylvania field ranks among the most courageous acts in american history. >> reporter: we talk about courage and remembering the people here. there are some things that people are talking about in the here and now, for instance, this is a $62 million memorial. they are still $10 million short of raising the funds they need. this memorial isn't finished yet, don. and it's been ten years. former president bill clinton was at the podium earlier today. he also had something to say about that. he got a lot of applause when he said "let's roll, let's get this done". >> you said it's not complete. do you know how much more they have to go before they finish it, david? >> reporter: well, there's a couple of other features here that are very interesting that they haven't put up yet. there's a visitors center they haven't put up yet. everything you see behind me is just the basics. they've just got the site prepared. they have a lot of grass and wildflowers planted around here. but as far as a permanent structure, they still have a lot to go and to get that done. today they did unveil a marble wall where it displayed the names of all the passengers and crew that were aboard flight 93. but that's just the beginning. and they want that message to be sent out to the rest of the country, we still need $10 million more to get this done. don? >> david, let's hope they get it. thank you very much, david mattingly in shanksville, pennsylvania, for us tonight. hours away from the anniversary of the september 11th attacks and there are worries about another threat. susan candiotti covering both angles of the story for us at ground zero tonight for us. susan, what are people talking about? i'm wondering, are more people visiting today with the anniversary tomorrow? >> reporter: there have been a lot of crowds, particularly here at ground zero, looking over the memorial from a distance. some people have had advanced tours. but in addition to thinking about what will happen here tomorrow morning in a wonderful ceremony, everyone is also talking about the possibility of that threat, a possible attack on new york city still unconfirmed, that threat is yet. but when you talk to people on the streets, they're also not overly concerned or worried about all the increased security around the city. they're putting up with it. take a look. >> i think new yorkers who went through the aftermath just got a little bit tougher. you almost accept the fact if you're going to live in new york, that threat's going to be here perennially. >> we hear that all the time. it's hard for that to -- it doesn't necessarily seem like a reality. >> there's always going to be threats out there like this. you have to remember we're out here protecting each other. >> reporter: don, people here, again, are putting up with all these security checkpoints, the random searches of cars and trucks of people at trains and bus stations and subways and bridges as well. >> susan has been covering this story for us from the very beginning, both angles, the anniversary and also that new terror threat. susan, don't go far away. we'll get back to you. cnn's athena jones has new information from fbi officials about this 9/11 anniversary terror threat, plus, we'll have a former fbi director to take us inside agency headquarters to give us insight on what it might be like there this weekend. that and more in just two minutes. i'm don lemon live in tampa, florida, where we're getting ready for monday's first-ever tea party debate. we need to cover the anniversary of 9/11 now. no one wants to hear about a possible terror plot timed for the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. intelligence authorities are trying to figure out how serious a threat this is. athena jones is in washington for us. how worried are police in the nation's capital right now? >> reporter: well, they say this is the kind of thing they've been preparing for for ten years, this anniversary, of course, didn't come up out of the blue. they've had ten years to prepare for it. they know that it was coming. they know these anniversaries are important to groups like al qaeda and their other extremist sympathize sympathizers. they say they're ready. across the city we've seen an increased presence, from the capitol police, from the park police, from the transit police and of course from washington, d.c. metro police. they've added 200 to 400 officers to the schedule this weekend, depending on what time of day. they're doing 12-hour ov overlapping shifts. they have extra shifts for tow trucks for cars suspiciously parked. or police officers in plainclothes, in uniform. they say that the city is ready. earlier today, we spoke with police chief lanier. let's listen to what she had to say about that. >> we have one of the highest trained, most capable police departments in the country. we've had ten years of ramping up our training, our capabilities, our equipment. so we've got one of the best police forces in the country. this should be one of the safest cities in america with the level of equipment we have here in washington, d.c. >> reporter: one of the ways they hope to keep the city safe is to encourage public vigilance. they've been encouraging people to call the police any time they see suspicious activity or people they think are suspicious. we got an e-mail from a producer a while ago who was riding on the metro. the subway here made an announcement as we approach 9/11, ladies and gentlemen, keep your eyes and ears open, if you see something, say something. that sort of thing. so the d.c. police have reported an uptick in suspicious activity -- reports of suspicious activity, i should say. these are leads they're tracking down. nothing so far is turning up on that, thank goodness. but they want to encourage the people to continue to call in. and the fbi official we spoke with earlier today, the assistant director here at the field office, said the same thing. he said about 85% of the tips they run down come from ordinary people. they want to continue to see that, continue to see people staying vigilant, don. >> yeah. you can't really be too cautious when it comes to this. athena, where are you standing? behind you, i see a lot of apparatus. i see an fbi van. i see some other things. is this a command center where you're standing? i'm sure this is not every neighborhood in washington, d.c. that has this much presence. >> reporter: no, no, no. we're outside the field office here. that's a bomb squad truck behind me. back behind there is the command center -- the mobile command center. this is a public show of force. a lot of what we're able to see is not as visible. we don't see this each day. a lot of what goes on happens behind the scenes. but traveling out from here throughout the rest of the city, you're definitely seeing a lot more police. yesterday on the subways, there were bomb-sniffing dogs. more k9 units. the park police told me they're observing through their network of cameras. those are all around the city. that's the sort of thing that all these officials are going to be using to make sure they keep an eye on things around here, don. >> athena jones, appreciate it. stay safe out there. we'll talk to you very soon. i want to bring in the former fbi assistant director for us, tom fuentes. tom, we talked about it. at first it was unsubstantiated but credible. what does that really mean? people are writing me saying, don, it's confusing, i don't know what that means. >> well, i understand, don. it is confusing. it's not specific enough to identify the individuals involved. >> reporter: whether they're already here in the u.s. or en route or who dispatched them, who trained them, what was their training like? i think from that standpoint, it's too vague of a threat to really completely help the authorities track down who's behind that. but i think that members of the intelligence community -- >> let me ask you this -- if i could jump in. you said it's too vague of a threat. if it's that vague, do you think -- i hate to say you shouldn't warn people. but what do you do? it's scaring people if you're saying it's vague and that it's unsubstantiated, yet it's credible. should you even warn people about it? are we making too much of it? >> no. the concern is that this particular weekend, even a vague threat or any other weekend, they would track it down. but this particular weekend, a vague threat's got to be look at, got to be considered as possible and go forward with every effort to stop it. you were just showing the tactical vehicles of the fbi in the washington field office. those vehicles are not only for show but are also ready to respond. all the tactical teams and investigators are ready to immediately be deployed in the event something happens. i started to say the intelligence agencies, the law enforcement agencies, have a sort of guarded optimism or confidence that it would be very close to impossible to have a large-scale international-coordinated attack such as 9/11 was. but the main fear now is that a small group, one individual, five individuals, a dozen, could plan something. and even though they may do that type of attack whether it be with small arms fire or explosives or gas tanks or some other readily available material, that if they can do that tomorrow or over this weekend, it ensures everlasting fame that they pulled it off on the ten-year anniversary. i think that that's what the authorities are concerned with. not just the people that may have been dispatched from pakistan or other reports that have come up over the weekend, that come up all the time, those are almost daily reports that come in. but that somebody that's not even on the radar is sitting alone and has already decide that had they're going to be very famous if they can do anything at all tomorrow. >> tom, i want to move on to something else. if it wasn't 9/11, do you think that it would garner this much attention? do you think federal authorities would be giving out such warnings if we weren't coming up on the anniversary tomorrow? >> that's hard to tell. personally, i don't think it would be ramped up to the degree it has been. it's just the absolute heightened concern that it is the ten-year anniversary. and it does add an additional motivation, the media coverage that bin laden had an interest in the ten-year anniversary or the new leader of al qaeda, zawahiri had an interest. if they successfully can pull an attack off in the united states, they will be famous. >> you alluded to the answer to this next question before. it's three people. there are small groups of people, if not individuals in the united states that the federal authorities are watching or maybe don't even know about. so aren't these people here all the time? is this anything different really than people who are here who may want to attack the united states or retaliate in some way always? >> that's right. there are people here all the time that want to attack us. these attack plans come up all the time. an example of a vigilant public that helped is most recently who had this student who was trying to obtain chemicals so that he could blow up george bush's home in dallas, texas. the chemical company alerted the fbi and the police and they were able to prevent that. so, yeah, these attacks are almost on a monthly basis, the fbi and new york city police or washington metro, other large police departments in the country, come up -- discover a plan either through community support or some other method or overseas inteps. there's a number of methods that alert the authorities to a possible plan. and we have seen these arrests over and over and over again. the d.c. metro system a little over a year ago, same thing. >> tom fuentes, thank you so much for putting this into perspective. good information. always appreciate it. we're going to tell you about some americans who know very little about what happened ten years ago tomorrow. many of them weren't born or too little to even remember it. what should you tell your kids about 9/11 or do they really have to know about it? that discussion straight ahead here on cnn. hey can i play with the toys ? sure, but let me get a little information first. for broccoli, say one. for toys, say two. toys ! the system can't process your response at this time. what ? please call back between 8 and 5 central standard time. he's in control. goodbye. even kids know it's wrong to give someone the run around. at ally bank you never have to deal with an endless automated system. you can talk to a real person 24/7. it's just the right thing to do. the images and video are everywhere on this tenth anniversary of 9/11, reliving the tragic moments may be very hard to do. we know they're hard to do. seeing the smoke-filled streets may trigger emotions and thoughts long-ago buried. probably things you buried there on purpose and didn't even know were there. how should you handle this? it's a serious discussion. you don't always know you're dealing with it. i'm joined by dr. wendy walsh. thank you for joining us. people may be caught off guard at the rush of feelings from something that happened so long ago. how does a person get through it? they may not even realize it. >> they may not even realize it. the distinction is whether they're suffering from major posttraumatic stress disorder. in that case, they have to get therapeutic help and specifically reach out to others who have been in the same situation. if they can talk through and heal their pain, they will be less sensitive to these images again. but for the rest of us, i think it's good to take an opportunity to mourn a bit and reflect and remember and keep our feet on the ground. >> so can we talk about kids because adults -- we're adults, we're responsible for ourselves. let's talk about kids now. i say that because this week one of our producers wrote an opinion piece for cnn.com about when and how he should tell his 9-year-old twins about 9/11. he opted to keep them in the dark for another year. said he didn't want to tell them. what do you recommend? how do parents deal with this? should they even tell their kids? >> it's going to be a different choice for every family. my recommendation is based on the age. if they're under 10 and you can protect them from it, i would su suggest, yes. i have a middle-schooler who's been watching graphic films many her school all week. we had the occasion last night of sitting in a traffic jam on our way to a wnba game and i got to talk to her about the meaning of it, about how some people's lives were turned around for the positive after grieving from the tragedy, how unfortunately some people became more prejudice, how some people became more civically minded and involved. i talked about the meaning. i think that's the key with older kids. >> i talked to one of the kids who was in the classroom, remember, when president bush got the news. and she said, she really doesn't think about it that much. she and her classmate, only when it comes to the anniversary. and she said in our conversation, they were sort of -- her class is sort of a symbol of how america and people can really recover through this. i want to talk to you about something that you write about. what is sublimation? you say it can help people get through this problem? >> it's one of those big psychobabble words as being a healthy defense to trauma. the other one being humor. and sublimation is when we take our own pain and we turn it around and help other people who are experiencing similar pain. so many people in amazing numbers did this after 9/11. there were widows who began to help other widows in afghanistan. there were people who made foundations to help the orphans. so many people did so many great works as acts of sublimation and that's the healthiest way to respond to this kind of tragedy. >> dr. wendy, appreciate it. >> good to see you. >> doctor, wait a minute before you go. there's a little surprise. can we back up here. i forgot about this. i want to congratulate you on your new gig co-hosting "the doctors" which focuses on health issues. you're going to be great. your first appearance is going to be tuesday. and we like to think that you helped us -- this was an act of sublimation for us. you helped us, we helped you. i think it's great and we're very happy for you. congratulations, all the best. >> thank you. i appreciate it. i love my friends at cnn. i'm not going anywhere. i'm still going to be in your face every week. >> awesome, thank you, wendy. your top stories are straight ahead. and have you heard? the united states is going back to the moon. blastoff just a few hours ago. plus, the reason i'm in tampa this weekend, the cnn tea party republican debate, monday night. which candidates need to make a move and who is trying to hold their position? asked him if ht and the old man stopped and thought and said: free 'cause that's how it ought to be my brother credit 'cause you'll need a loan for one thing or another score 'cause they break it down to one simple number that you can use dot to take a break because the name is kinda long com in honor of the internet that it's on put it all together at the end of the song it gives you freecreditscore-dot-com, and i'm gone... offer applies with enrollment in freecreditscore.com if you think even the best bed can only lie there. 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president joe biden were all on hand to honor the heroic actions of passengers and crew members aboard united airlines flight 93. the marble wall is inscribed with the names of the 40 passengers and crew members who fought their hijackers and prevented the plane where reaching its target. president obama and the first lady visited arlington national cemetery today to pay their condolences to families mourning loved ones. they visit add section of the cemetery where soldiers who served in iraq and afghanistan are buried. the president has proclaimed this weekend as national days of prayer and remembrance. he is expected to attend memorial services in new york, washington and also pennsylvania. nasa again is shooting for the moon. >> 2, 1, 0 and liftoff of the "delta 2 "w" with g.r.a.i.l. >> a lunar research rocket blasted off from cap canaveral, florida, this morning. two satellites will examine the moon to study how it was formed. this is the first mission to determine the internal structure of the moon. pretty interesting. residents along the susquehanna river are rolling up their sleeves as floodwaters are finally going down. they've been waiting a long time for this. the clean-up is starting after some 100,000 people had to evacuate central pennsylvania and upstate new york in the last few days. many neighborhoods are still, though, under water and more rain is in the forecast. but evacuation orders are expected to be lifted any time now. the flooding from tropical storm lee killed at least nine people. from too much water to not enough. look at this. this is texas experiencing the driest period since 1895. today firefighters say they have spotted 24 new fires. that is in addition to the 179 fires crews battled this past week that have charred more than 170,000 acres, destroyed more than 1,000 homes. the good news here, the worst one, the bastrop fire, is 40% contained. that is up from 30%. they will take what they can get there. flooding in the northeast, fire in the southwest, want to get the latest on what may be ahead for those areas. meteorologist jacqui jeras joins us from the severe weather center. we're hoping for good news. they need to dry out there in the northeast, jacqui. >> they really do. most of the rivers have crested and are receding. that's the glass half-full scenario. but unfortunately they're still in flood which means there's still water all over the place. lots of roads are still shut down and they're not going to go back within their banks until monday and tuesday for many of them. so flood warnings remain in effect for about half a dozen states. there is rain in the forecast. we've been seeing spotty showers coming in east to west. we have a frontal boundary here and seeing light rain showers. the rainfall totals are going to stay pretty minimal, maybe under an inch for everybody over the next 24 to 48 hours. that rainfall is taken into account in those flood forecasts that we still expect that not to be enough to make the rivers go back up. this is still affecting, believe it or not, what's happening in texas. on the backside of the high, we're bringing in the dry, gusty winds. very dry in texas, 90-degree temperatures and the fire situation remains dire for those folks in texas. >> jacqui jeras, thanks so much. want to go back to don now in tampa, talking about the first-ever tea party debate. hi, don. >> hey, susan. you're giving wolf blitzer a run for your money. i see you on "360," on hln. >> i may show up in tampa. >> we'd love to have you. with eight people on the stage, we could use your help. susan, thank you very much. eight gop contenders will take the stage at monday's cnn republican debate. two frontrunners hope to build on their leads while the other six try to make some noise. cnn's senior political editor mark preston joins me with a preview. he's back. you abandoned me, man. where have you been? >> last time we saw each other it was in new hampshire. >> listen, what should we expect? here's what all the pundits are saying -- it's a two-person race, it's going to be perry and romney. but bachmann won the straw poll. >> she did. but she won the straw poll on the same day that rick perry decided to announce he was running for president. by doing that, he took all the wind out of her sails. probably the person who has the most on the line monday night is going to be michele bachmann. this is supposed to be her constituency. the tea party activists, if she can't light the fire on monday night, her candidacy could be over. >> that's her base. this is history. that's the thing. we've had republican debates. we've had democratic debates. but they haven't had a tea party debate. does anybody really know what to expect when it comes to this? >> not really. but the tea party movement came about a couple of years ago. but it was kind of always there, though. it was conservatives who are angry at washington that want limited government. the thing about the tea party, what really helped them expand is they brought independents in, folks that necessarily weren't involved in politics. that's what we've seen. >> it's interesting you say that. i've been talking to the tampa tea party and the head of the tea party and some of the members. they say, listen, we had this idea for a while. we just didn't have one name for it like the tea party. one young lady said, i was involved with freedom works, which they believe is sort of a similar thing. but it's interesting because they don't blame one person. most people think, oh, these people blame barack obama. there are some who do. but they're saying, this started happening under president bush. they blame bush just as much. so they say it's really not about the person in charge, it's not about the party for them. that's what the people i spoke to said. it's really about spending and big government. they say, they don't want to do away with government. they want to limit it. >> limited government, less spending, get the federal government shrunk down. however, we'd be remiss to say the tea party is not wholly aligned with the republican party and they want republicans to win. >> i'm sure there are some independents but for the most part, it's republicans. here's what i'm wondering. if you are going to be up there on a stage for a tea party debate, for the first time, is that your main focus? do you want to just appeal to the tea party voters who are watching, the ones who are in the audience? do you have to appeal to the broader electorate as well? >> it's a great question. yes, they want to appeal to the tea partiers in the office. everyone is going to be watching it on their tv. at the same time, you have to be careful not to seem that you might be too extreme. i'm not saying the tea party is extreme. but there are people who think that it is. if you're somebody like a mitt romney who's been very careful not to absolutely align himself with the tea party but say he supports their principles, you have to be careful about how you walk that line. >> if you think extreme is a bad word -- it isn't always a bad word. these are people who are conservative and really there is no negotiating when it comes to spending. so if you want to say that's extreme, yeah. >> it's extreme on the liberal side, too. >> absolutely. >> but the critics of the tea party are going to rail against monday night's debate. you're going to see the critics really try to -- >> i talked to them. they said, we want to limit the government and cut spending. thank you very much, mark preston. you don't want to miss it. it's monday night, republican debate -- it's a tea party debate hosted by our very own wolf blitzer. i'm going to be live here from tampa. it's at 8:00 p.m. eastern. i'll be live from tampa, the site of the 2012 republican debate. let's change topics now. libya's new government may have taken control of tripoli. but the war is far from over. supporters of moammar gadhafi apparently won't surrender and several towns, not without a fight. [ tires screech ] [ crying ] [ applause ] [ laughs ] [ tires screech ] [ male announcer ] your life will have to flash by even faster. autodrive brakes on the cadillac srx activate after rain is detected to help improve braking performance. we don't just make luxury cars. we make cadillacs. handle more than 165 billion letters and packages a year. that's about 34 million pounds of mail every day. ever wonder what this costs you as a taxpayer? millions? tens of millions? hundreds of millions? not a single cent. the united states postal service doesn't run on your tax dollars. it's funded solely by stamps and postage. brought to you by the men and women of the american postal workers union. ♪ one of libya's last outposts of support for former leader moammar gadhafi is under siege right now. fighters loyal to the new government are trying to take the town of bani walid by force after talks collapsed this week. cnn's senior international correspondent ben wedeman filed this report. >> reporter: as soon as the deadline expired, opposition fighters fought their way to the edges of bani walid. but there, after making initial progress, they came under intense fire from gadhafi loyalists. officials saying they believe there are some special forces or elite forces of the libyan army inside that town. and they were forced -- the opposition fighters -- to move back under fire. >> our troops, they started to come out -- the remnant of gadhafi troops at the entrance of the city. and they found a lot of weapons still there. they had been fired on by rockets and also snipers all over the entrance. and they used the houses as their -- >> reporter: later in the day, we heard overhead jets and saw large plumes of smoke on the horizon. it appears that that is nato bombing on the town of bani walid. in the meantime, opposition fighters pulled back, apparently wait ring for more reinforcements before making another attempt to enter the town of bani walid. the lottery jackpot was worth a whopping $99 million. but not one cent went to a man, not one. went to a man who played the lottery for eight years with his co-workers. can you say lawsuit? this is the kind of truck that has it all. ♪ guess that means you can do it all. it's the chevy season of doing. now combine the all-star edition discount with other offers for a total value of $6,000. or qualified buyers can get 0% apr for 60 months plus $1,000 cash allowance on all silverado models. get to your chevy dealer and get that truck today. this is one of those things where you go "isn't that just my luck"? the one time you don't play the lottery with your buddies and guess what happens? >> i think that he could have sent his money in. he's probably in contact with somebody that he worked with that he could have given the money to to stay on top of it. >> sorry about your luck, i guess. tough pay the play. and if he was part of the group at one time, he was part of the group while he was paying. to win the lottery, you have to pay in. >> i feel for him, but if you didn't put into it, i don't think you should get anything at all. >> what would you do -- what would you do? you play the lottery for eight years with your co-workers, even chipped in for some of them when they were out sick and they weren't at work. but when you're out sick, they finally hit it big and then tell you, hey, tough luck. you'd probably feel a little bit cheated, wouldn't you? i know i would. if you're like one ohio man, you might sue because he is. let's bring in criminal defense attorney and former prosecutor holly hughes. does this man have a case? >> no, unfortunately he's not going to be able to get any money back. we've seen these cases fail over and over and over. the court says, it's an illegal contract. it's a gambling contract. there's nothing written down. this isn't something you entered into. sadly the legal system can't help him. but if he played for eight years, his friends need to pony up. what kind of friends are those? >> amen. wouldn't you do it? >> yes. >> he's been with us for eight years, we've been doing it, chip in, let the guy get some money. >> exactly. that's the difference between legal and moral right, you know? >> yeah. so let's move on to arkansas. this one is really a strange story. a weatherman at a local tv station wakes up in a hot tub after a night of partying next to a naked dead man wearing a dog collar. holly, what's up with this? >> don, this is very odd. it sounds like a crime scene there. i think they need to take their time and go through it. the biggest thing that i find odd is after he wakes up next to this dead man, he leaves the scene. that, to me, says volumes. if you are leaving a scene where your friend is dead next to you, what are you taking away? what are you hauling away from that scene? and even more suspicious is that we're hearing reports, unconfirmed at this point, that he has resigned his job. he quit his job on friday. so it gets stranger and stranger. i think after the forensics come in, we might see some charges levied. >> the partying probably just got a little bit out of control, my guess. i don't know for sure. let's move on. overseas to italy, the father of amanda knox, convicted of murdering her roommate in 2007. he believes the case against his daughter is falling apart. here's what they said earlier. take a listen. >> basically they have no case. there is no case left. and i'm very hopeful that by the end of the month, we'll get to bring amanda home. >> holly, even the judge seems to be fed up with the prosecution. what happened? >> actually he is, don. what we're seeing here is this case is falling apart because all the evidence that was used in the initial trial has now been called into question, not just the physical evidence, not just the dna testing. they went on and on about amanda's nice being on the knife handle. this was a knife found at her boyfriend's house used for cooking. the judge himself appointed dna specialists to review this evidence and they said, no, it's not there or it's contaminated. so the physical evidence is falling apart. and bear in mind, too, the original prosecutor has been charged for prosecutorial misconduct in other cases for doing the wrong thing, for not being upfront. when you add all that together and you see that the prosecution is now begging the judge, they just went running up there saying, let us retest again. they basically insulted the judge and his dna experts that said, we don't believe your results. yes, the judge is frustrated. i think what we're going to see is we're going to see both amanda and her boyfriend's convictions overturned based on this new evidence. >> appreciate it, holly. two parents face an horrific ordeal with their children and yet they still found a way to let their tragedy benefit others. that's ahead. on this eve of the tenth anniversary of 9/11, our cnn hero is a new yorker who is deeply moved -- was deeply moved by the outpouring of help his city received after the attacks. in 2004, jeff parness established a nonprofit that sends volunteers from new york to rebuild their disaster-stricken communities. take a look now. >> september 11th was a very tough time for the fire department. i lost some friends. guys i went to the academy with. afterwards, people came from everywhere to help us out. it was incredible. you knew you weren't alone. >> to see the outpouring of kindness and generosity was more powerful than the terror that happened. it really changed me. i'm jeff parness, and i just want to show the world that new yorkers will never forget what people did for us following 9/11. every year on the 9/11 anniversary, we take volunteers from new york and send them to some part of the country where they had a disaster and help folks rebuild. >> you pull into town and the tallest thing there is a grain silo, it's a culture shock. >> rebuilding homes or barns or churches, it's our way of saying "thank you." now more than half our volunteers are not from new york. people from all the small towns that we've helped show up to help the next community. >> we're going to pitch in as much as we can. >> after katrina, we jumped on his bandwagon. it's contagious. >> it's like a big dysfunctiona contagious. >> it's a big dysfunctional family reunion of disaster survivors who get together and do a barn raising. >> banging nails and building something but it's relationships that help you heal. >> it's about using the 9/11 anniversary, celebrate that volunteer spirit. >> we'll see you all next year. >> people say thing you for doing this. want to thank me, show up on the next one. what is that? it's you! it's me? alright emma, i know it's not your favorite but it's time for your medicine, okay? you ready? one, two, three. [ both ] ♪ emma, emma bo-bemma ♪ banana-fana-fo-femma ♪ fee-fi-fo-femma ♪ em-ma very good sweety, how do you feel? good. yeah? you did a really good job, okay? let's go back to drawing. jeff and deana leaver are the proud parents of three beautiful children. people would say their living the good life. and they were until the beginning of this year when things started to crumble. it began with reports from school. >> they said there's something quite not not right with jason. >> reporter: they took their 4-year-old son to hackensack medical center. diagnosis was devastating. >> jason has mps2, there is no cure, and jason will probably be gone by the age of 15 years old. >> reporter: mps2, hunter's syndrome a rare inherited disease that causes stiffness, unexpected seizures, facial changes, respiratory problems and eventually brain failure. those who are diagnosed with it usually doesn't live long enough to graduate from high school. and since it's genetic, they feared the worst foir their younger son, 2-year-old justen. my thoughts kept going to justin -- sorry -- he wasn't even 2, and all of the symptoms and signs and things to look for that they were explaining about jason i just kept seeing in justin. >> reporter: justin was also diagnosed with the fatal disease. now they faced their challenge head-on, determined not let the terrible events change their family life. they began a routine, taking the boys to weekly hospital visit to get muscle juice, a special concoction of medicines that helped fight off the illness' side effects. they helped do the best making their children's lives as normal as possible. they decided another way to overcome setbacks is to give to others. they've have created an organization known as let them be little times two, designed to raise awareness about hunter syndrome and provide financial resources to families who may be faced with the mps2 diagnosis. >> that's what i live for, for trying to create some type of awareness and cure with help of doctors for mps diseases. >> reporter: dr. sanjay gupta, cnn, reporting. ♪ okay, so who ordered the cereal that can help lower cholesterol and who ordered the yummy cereal? yummy. that's yours. lower cholesterol. lower cholesterol. i'm yummy. lower cholesterol. i got that wrong didn't i? 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