No Way Out

A Couple Faces Life In Prison After 35 People Die In Their Care

(CBS)  By defending the Manganos, Jim Cobb believes he's representing all of those who have suffered in the aftermath of Katrina. "When I walk through my neighborhood and I see empty houses and I see people that can’t get back home, for any government to suggest that it’s the victim’s fault is outrageous. And so I take it real personal," he says.

Cobb charges that the government is making Sal and Mabel scapegoats for its own failures during Katrina. Some of the blame, he says, lies with St. Bernard Parish officials, who could have ordered the Manganos to leave by declaring a mandatory evacuation.

Had they gotten a mandatory order, Mabel says they would have evacuated.

Several neighboring parishes, and the City of New Orleans, did declare mandatory evacuations in the days leading up to Katrina. But St. Bernard Parish did not.

Parish clerk Polly Boudreaux says there was confusion about what to do. "I guess the issue that everybody faced was, 'Who has the right to call a mandatory evacuation?' And if it's called, who then is supposed to enforce it? What does it mean mandatory, how do you force people to go?" she says.

Parish President Junior Rodriguez says the reluctance to call a mandatory evacuation was also an issue of money. "When we issue a mandatory, that's when most of the businesses shut down. Banks shut down and also refineries begin to shut down. And it's a substantial loss with regard to fuel, natural gas, petroleum issues."

To prosecutors, the absence of a mandatory evacuation order is just a technicality. "With a storm that’s a category 5 bearing down on you … does it really make a difference?" Knight asks.

"Do you think the parish government did everything it could to make it clear that people should evacuate St. Bernard Parish?" Dow asks.

"It was crystal clear to about 61,000 people," Knight says. "92 percent of them got the message."

"And got out of there safely," Cullen adds.

The calls parish officials made to the Manganos went unheeded; so did coroner Dr. Bertucci's offer of buses.

"Now Mabel, on Sunday, you spoke with Dr. Bryan Bertucci. What did he say to you in that phone call?" Dow asks.

"I never spoke with Dr. Bertucci," Mabel says, claiming that call never happened. "I would remember if Dr. Bertucci talked to me."

But Bertucci is adamant he offered the buses directly to Mabel. "I definitely spoke with Mabel Mangano. I vividly recall it. Imprinted on my mind," he says.

In any case, the Manganos say that in the absence of a direct order, their experience convinced them that it was safer for their residents to ride out Hurricane Katrina.

"You're looking down a hallway at 60 old folks, and you know your property hasn't flooded in 40 years and it didn't flood in Betsy. And you've got two new sets of protection levees, are you going to walk down the hall and start pulling plugs, and put them on a bus?" Cobb asks.

But as we know all to well, the levee system, supposedly built to withstand hurricanes even more severe than Katrina, failed.

Cobb says that disaster was caused by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. He says the Corps not only built the levees that failed, it also built a canal that destroyed thousands of acres of protective wetlands that once slowed hurricanes down before they reached New Orleans. That canal is called The Mississippi River Gulf Outlet, known by locals as "Mr. Go."

"So who killed the 35 people at St. Rita's?" Dow asks.

"We know who did that. It's the MRGO. The Mississippi River Gulf Outlet, built, engineered, designed and constructed by the Army Corps of Engineers," Cobb says.

The Corps designed the canal to merge with another waterway, as it reaches New Orleans. That design, according to many experts, accelerates a storm's rising waves making them deadly.

"They call it the 'Hurricane Highway.' The people in St. Bernard had been complaining about it for 20 years," Cobb says. "And what has the Corps done with those complaints? 'You'll be okay. The levees will hold.' And that's what Sal and Mabel relied upon. And that's what thousands of other people relied upon."