0 campaign would work. assange remains holed up in the ecuadorian assembly in london where he's been given asylum to avoid extradition to sweden on sexual assault charges. that's it for me. have a wonderful afternoon. brooke baldwin takes it from here. there's no sound, no warning, just a terrifying image. as crews search the rubble of a deadly derailment, the question we're asking, how safe are america's trains? i'm brooke baldwin. the news is now. a 6-year-old found murdered. the manhunt for her killer takes a dramatic turn when police approach her neighbor's home, the home of a teenager. the pope's security team on high alert as he kisses babies, shakes hands, and walks right out in the open. plus who's the woman at the center of the anthony weiner scandal? >> she fell in love with him because of a guiding light vision she had of him was not true. >> inside sydney lether's conversations with carlos danger. and women at merrill lynch claim they were given a book urging them to, quote, unquote, stroke men's egos in order to advance. we're on the case. here we go. good to see you on this thursday. i'm brooke baldwin. thank you for being with me. another day and more news. we have some more details today about the anthony weiner sexting scandal, including this bit we've learned, as far as how many women anthony weiner says he was involved with, why his wife decided to stay with him, and what one of his sexting partners was thinking. all of this as a brand new poll taken yesterday after the whole scandal broke shows weiner following out of the top spot in the democratic mayor's race in new york. you see him nine points now, nine points behind leader christine quinn. this morning weiner volunteered at a soup kitchen. there he is in brooklyn. afterward, he held a brief news conference and was asked a lot of questions. one of them, he was asked point blank about his sexting partners. here he was. >> how many conversations did you have with women after you resigned that were sexual in nature? >> i don't believe i had any more than three. >> friends of his wife, huma abedin, tell cnn she was this close, quoting them, this close to leaving weiner last fall when he confessed to sexting again, but they say she thought about it. she ultimately decided to stay to work on the marriage for the sake of the couple's very young son. cnn has identified one of weiner's sexting partners. she is 23-year-old sydney elaine lethers of indiana. her confidant spoke exclusively to laurie siegel of cnn money, who joins me now from new york. laurie, first of all, what was the crux of your conversation with this man, this confidant? >> he showed us all the chats he had with her about the relationship with anthony weiner, and essentially these conversations date back, and he told us this has been going on for a long time. he also said that she had told him they spoke all day for months. so a long time. and essentially, what was the nature of those chats? that was my question to him. listen to what he had to say, brooke. you don't know if they ever met, but from these chat logs and from what she showed you, do you know if they had any kind of sex? >> oh, absolutely, there was tawdry phone sex that went on between these two for months on end. you can see from some of the chat logs, the descriptions, anthony weiner apparently has a shoe fetish, and he also apparently has a domination fetish. that was the basis of their relationship. sydney thought the basis of the relationship was going to be some sort of mutual respect, loving, as idealistic as that would have been. >> reporter: we've spoken to many of sydney's friends, and a lot of them describe her as very -- as a political activist. she's very active on these online forums, and to a degree, many say, including lou, that she really idolized anthony weiner, to some degree. >> going back to your point, laurie, that it was a longer relationship. was he specific about how many months? i've read something like six, maybe it was longer, and let's be chris cal clerystal clear. nothing was ever physical, correct? >> reporter: that's what i asked him. and he said he wasn't sure on the timeline, and he said it was about six months. that's the answer he gave me. in these chat logs i was reading through, you see her describe this as almost like "house of cards." you almost get the idea that there was a little -- she could have been a little bit naive about this. she is, she's very active on social networks, on twitter, on facebook, on instagram. you get the idea she really is in her early 20s. >> how did the whole thing end? who ended it? >> reporter: i asked lou this, and he said, there wasn't a specific point, but she had idolized him, and to a certain degree, that had faded away. they started talking about, okay, what could we do next? could we potentially make money from this story? could we put it out there in a way we could actually make money? and those were the conversations we started having. >> laurie segall, great interview. we have just gotten word that an american died in that horrible train crash in spain. we do not have the name. the driver is being questioned. the death toll continues to rise. look at this with me. here it is, rounding the curve. the train nearing the end of a six-hour trip. it goes flying off the rails at 8:41 last evening. 281 passengers, crew of around 30. at last word, 80 people are dead. 178 injured, including at least 5 americans. we slowed down the tape, giving you a couple different vantage points, a couple different looks. if it you would, i want you to look very closely at this. as the train tries to negotiate this curve here, it appears as though the cars maybe have separated from the engine right nothing definitive there, potentially a clue. do you see that? karl penhaul is at the scene of the crash. what's the latest on this speculation, this theory that the train might have been going too fast? >> reporter: really at this stage, those comments came from spain's minister of development, speculating there may be excessive speed on a very tight curve was one of the factors here, but then the prime minister, mariano rahoi came along and said we're still looking at all factors to see what caused this tragedy. spain ruled out a terrorist act but said that all other factors are at play. you mentioned the video, and that's something that crash investigators take a keen interest in. yes, you see the front locomotive appear to slide off toward the back end and smash into the concrete pillar, but if you look just a fraction of a second before this happens, about midway along the length of the train, you see a puff of something. is it smoke? is it dust? there's kind of a little explosion of something before then you see the derailment going into full effect. so that is something also that investigators are going to be look at to get to the bottom of exactly what happened, brooke. >> i'm sure they're going through this video we're looking at frame by frame by frame. karl, i also wanted to ask, in reading about this, i read that one of the workers described the crash scene as hell. what more can you tell us about the seconds, the minutes, the hours after the crash and the chaos? >> reporter: i think you could use a lot of comparisons here -- and i think that all those comparisons would fall pretty much short. i just look at the facts on the ground, and it makes me shudder. right now a full one-third of the passengers on board this train are dead. one of the carriages from that train flew up 18 feet into the air. it was tossed into the air and landed 45 feet from the track. when we saw some of these wagons being lifted off the tracks and sent away on loaders, the whole side of a carriage had simply been ripped away. inside you see blood spotters and blood marks inside. it really is consistent with passengers being thrown around at high speed and ejected into the walls of those carriages. and, of course, we know that some of those carriages were split in half, some came on fire. if there is any hope in this, perhaps it was residents who lived alongside this track that raced down there and tried to pull the survivors from the wreckage, brooke. >> a harrowing scene there. karl penhaul, thank you so much. i want to bring in richard biehl in miami, a railroad and safety operation expert. really, i just want to go back to the video. to karl's point, investigators are going through this. i'm sure you've seen this, and we're watching it again. does what you're seeing support the idea that the train was going way too fast as it's going around this curve? >> so far, that's my understanding. we'll have to wait for further details on it, but it certainly looks like, if there was a 50 mile an hour speed limit on that curve, it seems to be doing much faster than that. >> and if you are the engineer or the driver, as they say in europe, of this train and you're rounding this curve, if speed ask is an issue, at what point is it too late to slow down? >> it is too late. you don't know what's going on in the cabin of the locomotive, whether he fell asleep or got distracted or whatever. it's obviously so far too fast that something had to have happened there. once you're into the curve, you can hit the brakes as hard as you want. it's going to take you a little while to get down to the point where the stress on the outside of that high rail tension just would be too much. >> what else? as you look as these pictures, you heard karl describe one of the carriages, one of the cars flying up 18 feet into the air. if you're an investigator, what are you looking at? what are you honing in on? >> it's going to take a lot more further study, but i saw the same thing. my initial viewing of the accident, and it's so rare to have a camera in place like that camera was, is that, wow, look at that. it looks like two or three or four cars behind the engine is where it first took place. and i watched it several more times, and it almost looks as if something happened, something almost jackknifed, but you never know. it could have been caused by the lead engine with so much stress on the rail going around, starting to turn the rail over, and it actually stayed on, and the other ones at that point, the rail was turning over and coming off. we just won't know until they finish their investigation. >> and i'm just curious, sort of relating this to us back home. i used to live in washington, d.c. i have hopped on the acela express many a time, traveling up to, say, new york city. maybe this is apples and oranges, but is this something that could happen here or not at all? >> oh, it could certainly happen here. i was on the acela a few months ago myself, and those trains can do 150 miles an hour up there. but for the most part, trains are safe. you don't have to worry. you don't have to stop taking the train. in 99.99% of the time, everything's competent, everything's fine. there's always going to be a human error or a track defect or some sort of defect on the train itself that would cause the problem. >> richard, thank you. >> you're welcome. coming up next, a suspected killer tells police good thing he got me because i was about to kill again. this news after he and his wife allegedly target and murder a sex offender. find out what clues his tattoos may offer. plus surreal images today out of rio. look at this. the pope's security crews once again on high alert as he steps out kissing babies, shaking hands, mingling with the crowds. s more secure. [ whirring ] [ dog barks ] i want to treat more dogs. ♪ our business needs more cases. [ male announcer ] where do you want to take your business? i need help selling art. [ male announcer ] from broadband to web hosting to mobile apps, small business solutions from at&t have the security you need to get you there. call us. we can show you how at&t solutions can help you do what you do... even better. ♪