CNN To Feature Costanzo Murder

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The story of murdered teen Micaela “Mickie” Costanzo could be featured on the CNN news program Anderson Cooper 360 as early as next month confirmed attorneys for her confessed killers Toni Fratto and Kody Patten.

According to Patten’s lead Attorney John Ohlson producers for the news program will be in Reno, Elko and Wendover this week interviewing people involved in the murder and its investigation.

The office of Elko Attorney David Lockie who represents Toni Fratto confirmed that Lockie had also been contacted for an interview.

But while the defense attorneys have been given a heads up to the tv program’s interest in last year’s murder of a 16 year old girl, law enforcement and the elko district Attorney’s office were apparently unaware of the national media spotlight soon to be focussed on them.

“I decline their request for an interview, what I call a ‘lawyer walk’,” Ohlson said. “But I was always a little mystified as to why this case never got national television exposure. It unfortunately has all the elements of the kind of story they usually go after.”

While Mickie Costanzo’s murder has been ignored by the national television media it has been covered thoroughly locally and on regional television in both Reno, Las Vegas and Salt Lake City almost from the moment the girl was reported missing.

In addition to the local media the story has also been picked up by most national newspapers and in the blogosphere primarily by politically liberal ones such as the Huffington Post and smaller evangelical Christian ones as well as the foreign Press primarily in the United Kingdom and Australia.

The common denominator in almost all of the non-local coverage is Fratto’s and to a lesser extent Patten’s membership in the LDS Church.

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In Great Britain and in Australia and other parts of the english speaking world Fratto is invariably referred to as the ‘Mormon Teen Killer’ either in headlines or the lead paragraph.

“When we see something like that,” said an LDS Church executive who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “We often ask if they would give the same kind of headline if the criminal had been a Catholic or Jewish or a Muslim. The answer is obvious. but on the other hand Mormons are in the news with Mitt Romney as the presumed Republican nominee. Even before that we have seen in the last few years Mormons coming to the attention of the entertainment industry with series like ‘Big Love’. There is a Broadway play going on now called the ‘Book of Mormon’.”

Just why Mormons became a hot topic especially abroad even before the election season may be a symptom of the church’s success. 50 years ago there were fewer than 10,000 Mormons in Great Britain according to UK census figures, today that number is quickly approaching half a million.

“50 years ago most of the British never met a Mormon,” he continued. “Today many of them had. We are kind of new and therefore perhaps newsworthy.”

While novelty can explain part of the international media’s fascination with the Costanzo murder. there may be a dark side to its attention from the left wing and extreme anti-Mormon evangelical blogs.

In most of those mentions of Fratto’s Mormonism come with in one or two blog posts of presumptive GOP nominee Mitt Romney.

“it’s kind of clumsy and I sincerely doubt it will be successful,” the LDS official continued. “While there are a very few evangelicals who may not for for Mr. Romney just because of his religion those numbers are pretty small.”

Indeed the most virulent attacks on Romney’s Mormonism have not come from the the very far Christian Right but rather from the often mainstream Liberal Left.

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According to the Gallup poll numbers 27 percent of Democrats would oppose a Mormon candidate, compared to 18 percent of Republicans. and according to a Pew poll Forty-one percent of liberal Democrats said they would be less likely to support a Mormon candidate.

Any attempt to tar romney with the murder of Micaela Costanzo simply because her killers were Mormons will probably only be successful with liberal anti-Mormons who would never vote for a Republican anyway.

Just how CNN will handle the Mormon tie in to the case remains to be seen. Cooper however earned the title of LDS hero early in the election cycle when he took on then candidate Rick Perry’s endorsement from pastor Robert Jeffress a virulent anti-Mormon and most recently took to task Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer for comments he made linking Romney to polygamy.

“But in this interview you mentioned six or seven times that his family came from,” Cooper asked. “His father was born into a polygamy commune in Mexico. Repeatedly mentioning that. It was Mitt Romney’s great-grandfather who practiced polygamy in the 1800s. Is that fair to raise?”