Widow: 9/11 Caused Children's Angst

Wringing out the emotional residue of terrorism for jurors considering the plight of Zacarias Moussaoui, a widow lamented Tuesday that her children haven't been the same since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Wendy Cosgrove, 48, of Long Island, N.Y., testified about the impact of her husband Kevin's death when he was trapped on the 105th floor of the North Tower of the World Trade Center.

Cosgrove said the couple's oldest son, who was 12 on Sept. 11, has become angry and self-destructive and had some scrapes with the law.

"He's very angry and often that anger is directed toward me," she said.

The couple's middle child, who was 9 on Sept. 11, has been mutilating herself and is undergoing therapy, she said.

On Monday, jurors heard a 911 tape of Kevin Cosgrove as he told the dispatcher, "I'm not ready to die."

Much of the tape was muffled and nearly inaudible — except at the very end, when he screamed "Oh God, no!" and the call went dead.

U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema has urged prosecutors to show restraint, but it has proved difficult to blunt the emotional impact as families of 9/11 victims tell their stories to jurors in Moussaoui death-penalty trial.

Moussaoui is the only person charged in this country in connection with the Sept. 11 attacks. The jury deciding his fate has already declared him eligible for the death penalty by determining that his actions caused at least one death on 9/11.

The jury also heard from 43-year-old Juan Rivero, a retired Port Authority of New York and New Jersey policeman.

Rivero told the harrowing tale of his rescue efforts at the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, during which he suffered injuries that forced him to retire in 2005 after 13 years on the job.

At one point, as the second tower collapsed, he testified he was running from the Trade Center complex toward the Hudson River when the debris cloud engulfed him.

He said the blast threw him half a block into a fence.

"I got consumed by the dust," he said. "I put my head down and saw my son's face. I thought I was going to die."

When the dust cleared, Rivero said he went searching for his partner, Al Neidermeyer, until 10 p.m. that night. He returned every day for the next 30 days, searching for Neidermeyer.

Within weeks, he learned that Neidermeyer's wife, Nancy, was pregnant with his daughter, Angelica Joy, who was born May 2002.

The Port Authority lost 37 officers on Sept. 11, the largest loss of life in one day by a law enforcement agency in the history of the United States.

The jury has heard painful testimony from more than 20 witnesses already, but that has done little to inoculate jurors against the emotional impact of each new story that has its own cruel twist on the familiar story of loss.

Some jurors have struggled to maintain their composure. One asked for a drink of water toward the end of Monday's testimony — after a day in which his face frequently showed the strain of hearing families' accounts.

Brinkema, usually a stickler for keeping the trial running until 5:30 p.m., has allowed court to close early during the victim-impact testimony.

"It is an understatement to say this is difficult testimony," she told jurors Monday afternoon. She earlier had warned prosecutors not to overplay emotional testimony and reminded them that appellate judges could overturn a death sentence if they believe such testimony is overly prejudicial.

Prosecutors said they scaled back some testimony. They have also frequently reminded the judge that they are presenting testimony from only a tiny fraction of those affected by the nearly 3,000 deaths that day.

So far, prosecutors are about halfway through the 45 victim-impact witnesses they plan to present to the jury. They intend to close their case on Wednesday.

The jury already has heard about a half-dozen painful accounts of the human toll exacted in the airborne attacks. They included a New York firefighter whose friend and mentor was killed when he was struck by the body of a person who jumped from one of World Trade Center towers to avoid being burned alive and the suicide note of a woman who lost her husband when his plane crashed into the towers. In the aftermath of the attacks, former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani said he attended more than 100 funerals, CBS News correspondent Jim Stewart reported.

Family members winced at the graphic images flashing on courtroom screens last week until Brinkema finally called a halt, Stewart reported.

"That'll be enough of that," she said.

Even though he was in jail in Minnesota at the time of the attacks, the jury in the first phase of Moussaoui's trial ruled that lies he told to federal agents a month before the attacks kept the authorities from identifying and stopping some of the hijackers.

Now they must decide whether Moussaoui deserves execution or life in prison.

Defense lawyers say the jury should spare Moussaoui's life because of his limited role in the attacks, evidence that he is mentally ill and because his execution would only play into his dream of martyrdom.

Late Monday, the defense issued a subpoena for would-be shoe bomber Richard Reid, who is serving a life sentence in Colorado after a failed try to blow up an American Airlines flight in 2001.

Moussaoui testified previously that he and Reid were going to hijack a fifth plane on Sept. 11 and fly it into the White House. The defense lawyers, who have tried to discredit their client's credibility on the witness stand, has said Moussaoui is exaggerating his role in Sept. 11 to inflate his role in history.