The Negotiators

An angry man takes his infant daughter hostage. Can a crack team of New York Police Department hostage negotiators work to save the hostages - especially the baby?

Take an unprecedented inside look at a hostage negotiation team at work, with Harold Dow reporting.

Last October, NYPD Detective Sergeant Wally Zeins was ending a night shift when he was called to Queens, where a man with a shotgun had gone berserk and shot three people. Police believed the suspect, Jarrett Jordan, held four hostages, including an infant, the shooter's daughter.

Besides being a detective, Zeins is one of the NYPD hostage negotiation team's top talkers.

Within minutes, police had the house surrounded. But they wouldn't make a move until they heard from Zeins' boss, Lt. Jack Cambria, head of the hostage negotiation team.

After making phone contact with the hostage taker, Cambria put Zeins on the case. Zeins is one of the most experienced negotiators.

A family man with three children, Zeins commands the night shift of a detective unit that covers all of Manhattan. He loves the excitement. But beyond his regular duties, Zeins is one of a hundred detectives also trained to negotiate hostage situations.

This time, he was dealing with a man had gotten out two weeks before from Riker's Island for breaking into his estranged girlfriend's house. Jarrett had a long history of abusing his ex-girlfriend, Diane - mother of their baby girl, Shyanne. He had come to the house to confront her.

"He found the house full of people, the infant, but not Diane, the mother of the baby. This enraged him to the point that he shot three people," said Cambria.

Besides his baby daughter, Jarrett says he's holding two men and one woman. In the hour since they began talking, Zeins struggled to calm down the agitated and desperate Jarrett.

To start winning Jarrett's trust, Zeins agreed to Jarrett's first demand: He told the tactical unit to pull back from the house. In return, Zeins asked Jarrett to let the baby go. Jarrett refused.

"Those people are the only people securing my safety right now," says Jarrett.

Cambria decided to take a risk. Detectives tracked down Jarrett's best friend, Brian Howard. Cambria broke one of his own rules, and put Brian directly on the phone with Jarrett.

"Traditionally I tend not to want to use non-police personnel to negotiate – the reason being it's an unknown factor that we're introducing," he said. "What I am hoping is that he will strike a chord within Jarrett, 'cause they've been best friends for many, many years."

But Brian couldn't get Jarrett to budge either. Over and over, Jarrett asked to talk to his ex-girlfriend, Diane.

Zeins told Jarrett that police couldn't find Diane. But in fact police had found her. She was just down the street, waiting in a police car, terrified for her baby Shyanne. The hostage team feared that putting Diane on the phone could be a fatal move for everyone in the house.

To build a rapport with Jarrett, Zeins revealed something of himself, talking about his own kids, and how much he loves them. Then Zeins talked about how much Jarrett's dad, Earl, loved him.

"For me, what's the most important thing right now is for you to understand that Earl is here, Earl loves you. Brian is with me. We're here together," Zeins told him.

But Jarrett seemed to have his own frightening agenda: "I'm not gonna be walking out this house, all right?" he told Zeins.

Credibility is important with negotiators: "That's what we base our success on. You can be honest with someone for hours during the negotiation process, and if you get caught up in one lie, those hours have just gone down the drain," says Jack.

But there was a problem: Diane's father had told a radio reporter that his daughter was there at the scene. That reporter broadcast the news over the air. And Jarrett also got a phone call from a friend who told him that Diane was at the scene. Zeins had to think fast now to avoid being caught in a lie. He tried to get Jarrett to switch the subject, talking about the need to give Jarrett a new phone with a fresh battery.

But Jarrett suddenly had urgent questions of his own. Concerned about noise from police outside, Zeins asks the cops to stop their activity for a minute.

Jarrett wanted to know about the people he shot that morning. All three were rushed to the hospital. One of them, Dorothy Hicks, is Diane's mother. When he found out they were still alive, he was upset – he wanted to kill them.

At one point, they took a break in talking. Zeins asked Jarrett if he wanted any Chinese food. Jarrett said no. "You have to lighten up. It's a very tense situation," said Zeins later.

After four hours, it looked as if the negotiators' patience was going to pay off. Jarrett told Zeins all he "really just wanted to do right now is spend this time with my daughter."

"Jarrett, it appears at least, is starting to make peace with ending this scenario," said Cambria.

Jarrett said that at 1 p.m. he would send the baby out with a woman in the house. But the team worried that Jarrett would start shooting once the baby was out. They were ready to go in at any moment.

Jarrett tried to stall, but after four hours of negotiations, Zeins was determined to hold him to the plan. The ups and downs were exhausting. "It's extremely taxing on the emotions. We know we're dealing with human life," said Cambria.

After nearly six hours, someone walked out of the house, carrying the baby. The baby was unharmed. The carrier, though, wasn't a woman, as Jarrett had said, but a man. Was that man a real hostage, or the hostage taker trying to escape? Cops held him, and he identified himself as James Alexander.

Alexander, whom Jarrett released with the baby, revealed some startling information: there were no other hostages. Jarrett was now by himself. Then Alexander told police that Jarrett had shot himself as Alexander walked out of the house.

But police hadn't heard a shot. Zeins tried to contact Jarrett, even yelling out his name: "Jarrett, pick up the phone. I want to make sure you guys are OK, brother," he said. "Listen, Jarrett, it's Det. Zeins. You have a long life ahead of you. You have a great life ahead of you."

ESU officers tried to get Jarrett's attention, with a bullhorn, and then by shooting rubber bullets into a window. Then a squad of heavily armed cops crept toward the house, with a dog on a leash.

Once inside, police discovered that Jarrett never had any other hostages. After spending the final moments of his troubled life with Shianne, he turned his shotgun on himself.

"My stomach dropped when I heard he shot himself," said Zeins. "I feel bad about that guy."

The team's success is bittersweet. Said Cambria: "We're thrilled about the baby and the hostage, but of course it's a bit of a letdown that we weren't able to save, save - save him from himself."

Later that day at the hospital, family members learned that Diane's mother Dorothy, wounded by Jarrett that morning, had died.

Cambria and Zeins must deal with their own emotional burdens from that day.

"It had an impact on all of us," said Cambria.