| 00:00:00 | The friends said it was an
cident.
|
| 00:00:03 | >> It was a fluke and
unfortunately emery died.
|
| 00:00:07 | >> One young life lost.
|
| 00:00:10 | >> I'm screaming, emery,
emwillry, please.
|
| 00:00:12 | >> Five more on the line.
|
| 00:00:13 | >> It's a wake-up call for
parents.
|
| 00:00:17 | "The surfer & the bird rock
bandits".
|
| 00:00:21 | >> Thanks for joining us.
|
| 00:00:22 | I'm ann curry.
|
| 00:00:23 | It's the kind of place with the
great unknown in most teenagers'
lives might seem to be what
college they'll attend.
|
| 00:00:32 | Now you this beach community is
trying to understand what led
some of america's most
privileged young people to turn
on one with of their own, a
local surfer about to make it
big.
|
| 00:00:43 | Here's keith morrison.
|
| 00:00:50 | >> There is a place where the
hills are manicured green down
to the pacific.
|
| 00:00:57 | A place from whose estates the
well with-to-do can see forever.
|
| 00:01:01 | From whose celebrated schools
the offspring leap to their ivy
league careers where evenature
has conspired.
|
| 00:01:14 | In the jewel by the sea, la
jolla, california.
|
| 00:01:21 | The book of crime is thin here.
|
| 00:01:23 | Bad things happen in less
rarefied zip codes than this,
yet happen they do.
|
| 00:01:30 | >> There's emery.
|
| 00:01:31 | Hi, emery.
|
| 00:01:32 | I love you.
|
| 00:01:34 | >> And here he is, the
california golden boy, bursting
with his possibilities.
|
| 00:01:42 | Ignorant of his imminent fate.
|
| 00:01:46 | >> Surfing is my passion.
|
| 00:01:46 | Even if I don't make money off
surfing, I'll always surf.
|
| 00:01:51 | It's my passion.
|
| 00:01:52 | >> His name is emery.
|
| 00:01:53 | Right here in this video he was
on the cusp of his life's
ambition.
|
| 00:01:58 | >> He was incredible.
|
| 00:01:59 | He could fly through the air
just like a rocket.
|
| 00:02:02 | He just enjoyed the ocean.
|
| 00:02:04 | >> Here is emery's mother,
cindy, who you'll notice is
talking about her son in the
past tense.
|
| 00:02:11 | >> He was a really happy guy.
|
| 00:02:13 | He had a bright smile, was
always smiling.
|
| 00:02:16 | He just lit up the room when he
walked into it.
|
| 00:02:18 | He was always excited about
everything, and into everybody's
business.
|
| 00:02:24 | >> Though it was emery's
girlfriend jenny who would
figure so prominently in the
mystery of that one terrible
moment.
|
| 00:02:30 | >> He always had that spirit in
him that was very youthful and
he'd look at things and still be
curious and amazed by them.
|
| 00:02:38 | >> But that was before it
happened, of course.
|
| 00:02:42 | And ultimately before, for
emery, was the island of kawai
where he grew up on world-famous
beaches.
|
| 00:02:51 | This is his little brother ninth
elle nigel.
|
| 00:03:01 | >> We were best friends.
|
| 00:03:02 | >> From the start, emery's
family saw something special in
him and his way with the waves.
|
| 00:03:05 | >> He started with a little
boogie board, then graduated to
learn how to surf the inside
reef.
|
| 00:03:11 | He started picking up waves a
little bit.
|
| 00:03:13 | Then a hurricane hit the island.
|
| 00:03:15 | >> In 1992 when emery was 9,
hurricane aniki devastated
kawai, devastated cindy, too.
|
| 00:03:24 | No home, no job, after the storm
she her sons and left
for california.
|
| 00:03:30 | >> I just had to focus on
supporting my kids and
surviving.
|
| 00:03:35 | >> She leaned on churches,
family, the red cross.
|
| 00:03:37 | >> My mom came out here with
nothing, you know.
|
| 00:03:39 | It was kind of hard, but we did
what we had to do.
|
| 00:03:44 | >> And she made it.
|
| 00:03:46 | Founded a modeling agency for
the surfer look, which did very
well.
|
| 00:03:50 | >> We bought a house in la
jolla.
|
| 00:03:52 | >> Not a mansion, mind you.
|
| 00:03:55 | Still, buying a house in la moi
hoya is a big deal.
|
| 00:04:02 | >> A huge blessing.
|
| 00:04:03 | >> A blessing indeed, la jolla,
the place so many strive to call
home.
|
| 00:04:08 | And, yes, this.
|
| 00:04:10 | In the sport that helped define
young california, la jolla's
wind and sea would be, like,
what, golf's pebble beach?
|
| 00:04:19 | But la jolla can be an insular
place.
|
| 00:04:22 | Wind and sea doesn't welcome
just anybody, which emery
discovered as a teenager.
|
| 00:04:26 | >> So when he first started
surfing there, you know, being
that he's hawaiian, you know,
they were a little rough on him.
|
| 00:04:33 | >> They don't welcome outsiders.
|
| 00:04:34 | >> No.
|
| 00:04:35 | They weren't really welcoming.
|
| 00:04:37 | >> But emery, remember, was like
a rocket on his board and
eventually, among the regulars
at wind and sea.
|
| 00:04:45 | >> He proved himself on his own.
|
| 00:04:47 | After a while, wow, he's really
good.
|
| 00:04:49 | >> So he belongs here.
|
| 00:04:50 | >> He kind of earned the
respect.
|
| 00:04:53 | Then he just got better and
better and better so all the
photographers would go down
there are and would want to film
him.
|
| 00:04:59 | >> His girlfriend jenny was on
the beach with the rest of them.
|
| 00:05:02 | >> He was good-looking, he was
charming.
|
| 00:05:05 | One of the best surf irs in la
jolla.
|
| 00:05:08 | >> He was so good, our golden
boy, as he filled his trophy
case and won his prizes that
eventually the sponsors came
sniffing around, talking real
money.
|
| 00:05:16 | And thus the opportunity, once
just an idle dream, to make his
living this way.
|
| 00:05:21 | He was going pro.
|
| 00:05:23 | >> I remember him just crying, i
can't believe it.
|
| 00:05:26 | I said, well, you deserve it.
|
| 00:05:28 | Just really proud of him.
|
| 00:05:30 | >> But this was still just
anticipated success here in
lucky little la jolla.
|
| 00:05:35 | For all his promise in the
water, emery of 24, was still
living in his mother's house,
his future unsecured.
|
| 00:05:43 | Which was not unlike a whole
group of young la jolla men,
raised and schooled here who now
drifted unfocus you down
affluent avenues toward the
signal event of their lives.
|
| 00:05:58 | Remarkable, really, that this
place of so much promise and
privilege would become the stage
for what happened.
|
| 00:06:04 | For the sort of occasion that
can knock out dreams in an
instant.
|
| 00:06:12 | >>> Coming up --
early signs of trouble in
paradise.
|
| 00:06:16 | >> You're, like, oh, there's a
fight again.
|
| 00:06:18 | You know, there's the bird rock
bandits.
|
| 00:06:23 | >> When "the surfer & the bird
rock bandits" continues.
|
| 00:06:29 | #
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| 00:07:09 | ♪♪
|
| 00:07:09 | half
♪♪
|
| 00:07:13 | ♪♪orn from the map
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|
| 00:07:17 | ♪♪ I am carrying this scra
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|
| 00:09:40 | >>> it's a beautiful place,
la jolla, with its
preservation-minded downtown,
parks, famous waves, beaches,
lovely homes, privileged,
wealthy.
|
| 00:09:53 | Emery kauanui's mother, cindy,
found a way in and succeeded.
|
| 00:09:56 | Now emery, the budding surfing
pro, was at the prosopus of
everything he thought he wanted
here in la jolla.
|
| 00:10:10 | But every town, rich and poor,
has the best neighborhoods and
some a little less so.
|
| 00:10:16 | Some could slide modestly
anonymous into any town
anywhere, such as the la jolla
neighborhood they called bird
rock.
|
| 00:10:24 | HERE IS WHERE IN THE MID-'90s, A
Group of little boys solidified
a lifelong bong.
|
| 00:10:28 | A little kid named eric house,
for example.
|
| 00:10:30 | Here is another one of them,
hank hendricks.
|
| 00:10:32 | And like most any pack, people,
wolves, you name it, they
gravitated to their alpha male,
a strapping big kid named seth
cravens, who happened to be the
13th of his parents' 14
children.
|
| 00:10:46 | A charismatic child says his
father, bill.
|
| 00:10:48 | >> He was very outgoing.
|
| 00:10:49 | As a child, anybody he would
meet, he has these very pretty
eyes and that has been an
attraction.
|
| 00:10:58 | >> Jenny groso, emery's
girlfriend, was friendly with
seth in middle school.
|
| 00:11:05 | >> There was a group of us that
would hang out, eat sandwiches
after school in the garage and
listen to the 'n sync cd.
|
| 00:11:12 | You know, he were kids.
|
| 00:11:13 | >> But emery's younger brother,
nigel, saw a different side of
seth cravens.
|
| 00:11:17 | >> The first day I met him, he
tried fight me, sixth grade.
|
| 00:11:20 | This guy has been a bully since
he was a kid.
|
| 00:11:25 | >> A bully?
|
| 00:11:26 | Well, perspective can change a
lot of things about the way you
see a person.
|
| 00:11:31 | In those early years, the little
boys bunched together at t-ball
games and on their skateboards
and somewhere along the way,
perhaps elementary school or
middle school, they gave
themselves a nickname, the bird
rock bandits.
|
| 00:11:46 | By the time the new millennium
rolled around, they had
shortened that to brb, the
bandits.
|
| 00:11:58 | Seth and his friends were still
in high school by then, popular,
good-looking, football players.
|
| 00:12:07 | >> He always had girlfriends.
|
| 00:12:08 | >> He was the center of
attention a lot of times.
|
| 00:12:10 | >> But at this elite la jolla
high school, the bandits
sometimes got attention for the
wrong reasons.
|
| 00:12:17 | Hey came to our school with
the reputation of getting in
trouble, fighting and partying.
|
| 00:12:20 | >> La jolla high school football
coach and history teacher dave
knew the boys all too well.
|
| 00:12:30 | He tried to rein them in, with
little success.
|
| 00:12:31 | One of the bandits, eric house,
was an all-league player.
|
| 00:12:35 | But off the field he ran into
trouble with the law with a
|
