Latest / Crime Stories with Nancy Grace / Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan: Man Sends Estranged Allergic Wife, Sends Her Death Flower

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Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan: Man Sends Estranged Allergic Wife, Sends Her Death Flower · Crime Stories with Nancy Grace

0:08
Speaker 1: Buddy Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan. I'd have to say
0:20
Speaker 1: that probably my favorite group would have to be strawberries.
0:26
Speaker 1: I love strawberries. I love fresh strawberries, and I haven't
0:29
Speaker 1: always loved them. But there's a place that's very near
0:34
Speaker 1: and dear to my heart where I came to love strawberries,
0:38
Speaker 1: and it's a little town called Potchitula, Louisiana. Ponchitula has
0:44
Speaker 1: just finished up their annual Strawberry Festival. And you know,
0:48
Speaker 1: Louisiana is renowned for festivals. I mean, you've got everything
0:51
Speaker 1: from gumbo Festival, crawfish Festival, a catfish festival, and they've
0:55
Speaker 1: been doing it for years and years, and I like
0:57
Speaker 1: going to all those things, but for me, there's nothing
1:01
Speaker 1: that beats the strawberry Festival. I have seen strawberries there
1:05
Speaker 1: the size of apples, and it is a joyous occasion.
1:10
Speaker 1: They've got strawberry jam, jelly, They've even got strawberry wine,
1:16
Speaker 1: and it is just a fantastic time. You know, you
1:19
Speaker 1: got Cajun music, people are dancing around. And today I
1:25
Speaker 1: want to talk about a case that unfortunately originated in
1:32
Speaker 1: one of my favorite places in Louisiana. Punch Toola Louisiana.
1:36
Speaker 1: But the subject here is not going to be about strawberries.
1:41
Speaker 1: It's actually going to be about another plant, a flowering
1:45
Speaker 1: plant that many times people associate with death. Today we're
1:51
Speaker 1: going to talk about a nurse who was seemingly attacked
1:57
Speaker 1: with a blunt object in her punch tool home left
2:01
Speaker 1: or dead, and we're going to try to understand how
2:04
Speaker 1: somebody could have gotten rid of the evidence involved in
2:07
Speaker 1: the case. I'm Josep Scott Morgan, and this.
2:12
Speaker 2: Is body Bags.
2:16
Speaker 1: Dave my wife, and I know this because I've tested
2:21
Speaker 1: it over the years. My wife loves to get flowers. Now,
2:24
Speaker 1: some people will say that it's money. You're throwing away
2:28
Speaker 1: money when you do it. I don't believe. I see
2:29
Speaker 1: it as an investment, Okay. I see it as an
2:32
Speaker 1: investment in or a relationship. If I get into a
2:35
Speaker 1: fight with my wife, which we rarely do, are disagreement,
2:38
Speaker 1: let me put it that way, I don't go out
2:41
Speaker 1: and rush out and buy her flowers to try to
2:42
Speaker 1: make everything. I just will randomly send her flowers, and
2:46
Speaker 1: I love the expression I see on her face. It
2:49
Speaker 1: brings me joy, and flowers commonly do bring me joy.
2:53
Speaker 1: I like growing flowers. I like growing wildflowers. Actually some
2:57
Speaker 1: people might know that about me. I hope you think
2:59
Speaker 1: none the less of me as a result of that.
3:01
Speaker 1: But as a matter of fact, our first date that
3:05
Speaker 1: we ever had.
3:07
Speaker 3: By the way, not talking about his first date with me,
3:09
Speaker 3: talking about his wife.
3:11
Speaker 1: I cut fresh wildflowers out of my garden at home
3:18
Speaker 1: and took those to her on our first date. And
3:22
Speaker 1: you know, after that, I knew Hatter. So uh, yeah,
3:25
Speaker 1: flowers have always played a big role in my life.
3:27
Speaker 2: But so you're admitting you were stuck in your future.
3:32
Speaker 1: It was a blond date. It wasn't you know. We
3:35
Speaker 1: were before the days where you could really cyber stock anybody.
3:39
Speaker 1: So yeah, it was I've always loved flowers. But I
3:43
Speaker 1: got to tell you, Dave, the this case is very
3:46
Speaker 1: troubling today because it does involve it does involve lilies,
3:50
Speaker 1: and you know, we've I think commonly people have associated
3:55
Speaker 1: lilies with with death. There's imagery out there of you know, bodies,
3:59
Speaker 1: even I think going back to the Middle Ages, where
4:01
Speaker 1: you have bodies that are casketed and they're laying there
4:05
Speaker 1: where their hands crossed and their lilies across their chest,
4:08
Speaker 1: it's always symbolic of that. I find this case very disturbing.
4:12
Speaker 3: And I'm glad you brought up the funeral with the
4:15
Speaker 3: hands crossed with the lilies, because that actually was part
4:19
Speaker 3: of the break in this case. Today we're talking about
4:23
Speaker 3: the death of Lisa Hernandez, talking about a forty five
4:27
Speaker 3: year old woman who accomplished. She's a nurse, accomplished woman.
4:33
Speaker 3: She's the person everybody liked to work with. You know,
4:36
Speaker 3: you you always think about what are people going to
4:38
Speaker 3: say when you're gone, and you know, we don't get
4:41
Speaker 3: to hear those things because we're gone. In this respect,
4:44
Speaker 3: that was the first thing I thought of, is everybody
4:46
Speaker 3: has these wonderful nice things to say about her, and
4:50
Speaker 3: she's not here to enjoy them. She was found by
4:54
Speaker 3: her daughter. Daughter comes in, calls nine one one because
4:57
Speaker 3: she finds her mom. She's not ri responsive, she's got
5:01
Speaker 3: blood everywhere and doesn't know what happened. It looked like
5:06
Speaker 3: maybe there was a robbery of some sort going on
5:08
Speaker 3: in here, but calls nine one one. They come out
5:11
Speaker 3: and sadly Lisa Hernandez is dad. When everything was said
5:17
Speaker 3: and done, Joe about her body and the damage that
5:22
Speaker 3: had been done. I wrote this down because I had
5:26
Speaker 3: to ask you. This says cause of death, blunt force
5:30
Speaker 3: instrument and a sharp edged instrument. How do you, as
5:40
Speaker 3: somebody investigating a death and you've got these, how do
5:43
Speaker 3: you put this together? And what is something that could
5:47
Speaker 3: be a blunt instrument as well as a sharp edge?
5:50
Speaker 2: Is there is there something that could be both? Oh?
5:53
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. There's a couple of things that come
5:56
Speaker 1: to mind, And I've had deaths involving both of these instruments.
6:01
Speaker 1: I'm gonna mention and these are just off the top
6:04
Speaker 1: of my head. The first one, obviously, is going to
6:06
Speaker 1: be a hammer, a claw hammer, you know, where you've
6:09
Speaker 1: got the blunt leading edge that is used to hammer
6:13
Speaker 1: nails into a surface, and then you flip it around
6:18
Speaker 1: and you've got these two and they look like big
6:21
Speaker 1: buck teeth that are coming down that have leading edges
6:24
Speaker 1: that are very sharp, and that of course traditionally has
6:28
Speaker 1: been used pride nails up with. But it is one
6:31
Speaker 1: heck of a fatal instrument. The other thing that I've had,
6:35
Speaker 1: and I don't think that's what we're dealing with here,
6:37
Speaker 1: is a mall. A mall looks like a sledge hammer,
6:42
Speaker 1: with a blade on the other side, and you can
6:46
Speaker 1: split wood with it because it's got so much weight
6:49
Speaker 1: to it, and so that weight is transferred, you know,
6:52
Speaker 1: down onto a block of wood. It has a bit
6:54
Speaker 1: more utility than a standard axe, for instance, and you
6:58
Speaker 1: can flip it around and use it as a sledge.
7:00
Speaker 2: I've got one of those. I did not know what
7:02
Speaker 2: it was called.
7:03
Speaker 3: It's just something that somehow ended up in my garage.
7:06
Speaker 2: You know, a U l Yeah, it's real heavy, it's
7:08
Speaker 2: got yeah, so.
7:09
Speaker 1: It's a weird word. But yet hey, you know, mall
7:11
Speaker 1: itself is used to describe the individual was maulled, So
7:16
Speaker 1: that gives you an indication that there in the past
7:18
Speaker 1: there's been violence associated with it. I mean, whi elst
7:21
Speaker 1: would you name this instrument that I'm probably you know,
7:23
Speaker 1: I'm sure that some some linguistic person that's out there
7:27
Speaker 1: will probably you know, catch me in the lurch here
7:29
Speaker 1: some way. But that's that's my assessment.
7:32
Speaker 3: I've got one, and I didn't Again, I don't know
7:36
Speaker 3: how I ended up with it. I'm sure somebody passed
7:38
Speaker 3: away and I ended up with it.
7:40
Speaker 1: It's one of the best instruments she can have in
7:42
Speaker 1: your tool shit. The only thing about it is it'll
7:44
Speaker 1: wear you out, I mean real quick. I used to
7:47
Speaker 1: get in shape for football during the off season by
7:50
Speaker 1: felling trees with a family member and we would split wood,
7:55
Speaker 1: you know, we'd cut it into sections. And I had
7:57
Speaker 1: a mall to do that with. Also had a sledge
7:59
Speaker 1: hammer and a couple of steel wedges and all that
8:01
Speaker 1: sort of thing. But the mall will get the job done.
8:03
Speaker 1: But just understand it would wear you out. But in
8:07
Speaker 1: this set of circumstances, Dave, I cannot necessarily see someone
8:12
Speaker 1: coming into this house. And by the way, she was
8:15
Speaker 1: found actually on the floor between the bed and the dresser,
8:20
Speaker 1: I think, And there's blood everywhere. When you're at a
8:23
Speaker 1: death scene and you've gotten matted, coagulated blood about, you
8:29
Speaker 1: have to be very very careful in handling the body
8:34
Speaker 1: and making any kind of injury assessment at that time
8:38
Speaker 1: because you will be super encrusted with blood. That's been
8:42
Speaker 1: my experience, and you're not going to be able to
8:45
Speaker 1: appreciate everything at the scene relative to trauma. So you
8:49
Speaker 1: can say that, yeah, there is what appears to be
8:52
Speaker 1: copious red substance at the scene. Of course, that translates
8:56
Speaker 1: into blood. Once you've confirmed it scientifically, and you can
8:59
Speaker 1: do that at the scene, you can do an on
9:01
Speaker 1: the spot test to say that this is in fact
9:03
Speaker 1: blood and that it's human blood and all this sort
9:05
Speaker 1: of stuff. But until you can get a body back
9:10
Speaker 1: to the morgue under the white hot surgical lights, it's
9:15
Speaker 1: best that you don't jump to any conclusions. Because I've
9:19
Speaker 1: seen gunshot wounds to the head that have generated tremendous
9:23
Speaker 1: amounts of blood. But I've also seen blunt force trauma
9:26
Speaker 1: as well, and when you get a combination, Dave of both,
9:29
Speaker 1: what they're saying is blunt force and sharp force, it
9:33
Speaker 1: gives you a sense of probably, unfortunately, God bless her,
9:36
Speaker 1: what this poor daughter saw once you got there. I mean,
9:39
Speaker 1: I can't imagine walking in and someone seeing their mama
9:42
Speaker 1: laying on the floor and she's encrusted with blood. It
9:45
Speaker 1: would confuse the investigators out there unless they're very, very
9:48
Speaker 1: careful and be very painstaking to get the body to
9:51
Speaker 1: the forensic pathologist so they can document it with the
9:53
Speaker 1: crusted blood. Then at the more you bathe the body,
9:58
Speaker 1: not with soap, but you just kind of rinse it down.
10:00
Speaker 1: We have a sprayer that's hooked to the autopsy table,
10:04
Speaker 1: and it kind of looks like a sprayer you would
10:06
Speaker 1: have on your sink. It's a bit more robust than that,
10:09
Speaker 1: and it forces water into these crusted areas and you
10:12
Speaker 1: kind of have to wipe it away to reveal any
10:15
Speaker 1: kind of injuries. And as a matter of fact, from
10:17
Speaker 1: one of the things we do that I may have
10:20
Speaker 1: mentioned before is that, particularly with injuries to the head,
10:22
Speaker 1: we actually shave the head, We shave the area you know,
10:26
Speaker 1: around there. So you got to be real careful, Dave,
10:28
Speaker 1: when you're you know, when you're funding assessments. It seems
10:31
Speaker 1: because when you.
10:31
Speaker 3: Go to a funeral, I mean that, I'm sure when
10:34
Speaker 3: you're trying to figure out how a person died, what
10:37
Speaker 3: took place, you're not really concerned with what are they
10:40
Speaker 3: going to look like in the casket for their family.
10:43
Speaker 3: You've got to solve this crime. But I wondered about
10:47
Speaker 3: the shaving. If it was full on, got to shave
10:49
Speaker 3: everything to make sure we don't miss anything, or.
10:52
Speaker 1: No, you'll inspect the area, you'll rent out the hair net.
10:55
Speaker 1: Keep in mind, I know some of you guys are saying, well,
10:57
Speaker 1: you're watching way evidence you do this after you have
11:01
Speaker 1: gone to great links to collect trace evidence. Okay, that's
11:04
Speaker 1: why you don't want to wash the body down in
11:07
Speaker 1: any way until you can do things like tape lifts
11:10
Speaker 1: and certainly do swabs you're looking for DNA and all
11:14
Speaker 1: this sort of thing. You have to be very patient.
11:16
Speaker 1: That's why if you get these complex cases out there
11:19
Speaker 1: where you've got multiple strikes, you will literally have a
11:22
Speaker 1: layering of injuries. And it's a nightmare. I mean, it
11:25
Speaker 1: really is. It's a nightmare because sometimes if you've got
11:28
Speaker 1: multiple strikes to the head, for instance, you're going to
11:31
Speaker 1: have overlying lacerations. And the trick is, first off, when
11:36
Speaker 1: you assess us lacerations, are they anti mortem? That means
11:40
Speaker 1: that if they struck, you should have surrounding hemorrhage. But
11:44
Speaker 1: if they're post mortem, all you've got is a laceration
11:47
Speaker 1: and there's no hemorrhage, there's no echemmosis, which is a
11:50
Speaker 1: fancy word for swelling. You're not going to have that.
11:52
Speaker 1: So you have to be very careful when you're doing
11:54
Speaker 1: this assessment because as we know, I mean, you and
11:56
Speaker 1: I have covered tons of them on body bags where
12:00
Speaker 1: we have people that do things to bodies after death,
12:03
Speaker 1: when you're doing those assessments, and then you throw in
12:05
Speaker 1: the sharp edged element too, how do you delineate between
12:09
Speaker 1: all of this and with a head strike, the one
12:11
Speaker 1: thing that you can count on that you're going to
12:13
Speaker 1: see resting just beneath the surface is going to be
12:19
Speaker 1: a skull underlying that traumatized scalp, and you will have
12:23
Speaker 1: multiple fractures of the external table of the skull, and
12:28
Speaker 1: many times it looks precisely like a cracked, hard bolled eck.
12:51
Speaker 1: When you're death investigator, you don't always frame things as
12:59
Speaker 1: an investigator. When you're at the scene, sometimes your humanity
13:03
Speaker 1: will take over. And what I mean by that if
13:06
Speaker 1: you're working a case in a neighborhood, for instance, just
13:10
Speaker 1: like the one that mister Nandez lived in, I've caught
13:14
Speaker 1: myself many times with my thoughts drifting to the sight
13:19
Speaker 1: of people peeping out of their windows or coming out
13:22
Speaker 1: onto their driveway, or even people taking photos and video
13:27
Speaker 1: of us working the scene, and they would gather together
13:32
Speaker 1: in clusters, and it's always stuck with me. I think
13:36
Speaker 1: it has something to do with human behavior and group
13:40
Speaker 1: human behavior. It's like you, if you have a perception
13:43
Speaker 1: of evil or harm that might be coming your way
13:46
Speaker 1: because of one of your own in your neighborhood has
13:48
Speaker 1: been attacked. People that might not otherwise talk to one
13:52
Speaker 1: another gather together. And I've often thought about, you know,
13:56
Speaker 1: what would it be like to live in a neighborhood
13:59
Speaker 1: where you you've got a woman who is gainfully employed,
14:05
Speaker 1: who was known, who had a family. What would it
14:08
Speaker 1: be like to find out the news that she'd been
14:12
Speaker 1: literally beaten to death.
14:14
Speaker 3: Dave, it would be a shocking, worrisome time in your neighborhood,
14:19
Speaker 3: that's for sure. With Lisa and David Hernandez, they actually
14:24
Speaker 3: they're both nurses, both in the same medical field, and
14:28
Speaker 3: they had hit the end of their relationship rope and
14:31
Speaker 3: they were separated. They were not divorced yet from what
14:34
Speaker 3: I can gather, but they had been at least separated
14:37
Speaker 3: for a year. That's why they refer to them as exes.
14:42
Speaker 3: In some states, you actually have to be separated legally
14:44
Speaker 3: for a year before a divorce would be granted, and anyway,
14:48
Speaker 3: they had been during that year.
14:49
Speaker 2: Though.
14:50
Speaker 3: It's interesting how investigators have pointed out that it was
14:55
Speaker 3: after about a year of separation that David Hernandez started
15:01
Speaker 3: stalking his almost ex wife.
15:05
Speaker 2: They didn't say he did it right away.
15:07
Speaker 3: It was after, right at the edge, when it was
15:10
Speaker 3: time where it looked like the divorce was really going
15:12
Speaker 3: to happen. That's when he turns into overdrive and he
15:15
Speaker 3: starts following her. He puts a tracking device on her car.
15:23
Speaker 3: He sends her flowers, but not just any flowers. Okay,
15:27
Speaker 3: David Hernandez knew that his wife was highly allergic to
15:33
Speaker 3: Lili's So when he sends her a beautiful bouquet of
15:37
Speaker 3: flowers to her place of work for everybody to see,
15:40
Speaker 3: and here you've got lilies that are referred to as
15:43
Speaker 3: death flowers, and she is highly allergic. So you talk
15:48
Speaker 3: about using something you know about somebody as it's today.
15:52
Speaker 3: And on top of all that, he would randomly pop
15:55
Speaker 3: in at work. He would just he knows what a
15:57
Speaker 3: nurse is going through at work, yet he would just
16:00
Speaker 3: randomly pop up at her work basically saying, hey, I'm here,
16:05
Speaker 3: I'm watching I got you. And by the way, it
16:08
Speaker 3: wasn't until after her death that they found the tracking
16:11
Speaker 3: device on her car.
16:12
Speaker 1: That's the wait, hang on that, that to me is
16:15
Speaker 1: one of these absolutely terrifying things. I hate this crap.
16:19
Speaker 1: I hate the idea of somebody being able to track
16:24
Speaker 1: another individual. I think that one of these companies out there,
16:27
Speaker 1: I guess it's Apple, you know, has that Apple Tracker
16:30
Speaker 1: thing that people can use. And I understand the utility
16:34
Speaker 1: of it. I mean, you know, if you've got a
16:36
Speaker 1: dog that's you know, like I've got, yeah, I've got
16:39
Speaker 1: my laboratory retriever whom I love. You know, if I
16:42
Speaker 1: could put one of those in her collar, perhaps you know,
16:45
Speaker 1: I could see where she is. But it's the idea
16:49
Speaker 1: of someone having the ability to do that to another person.
16:54
Speaker 1: You know, when we were kids, dave that kind of
16:57
Speaker 1: technology that that's something that that's something we would have
17:00
Speaker 1: thought about with James Bond movies.
17:01
Speaker 3: It was like a video phone, you know, yeah, yeah, exactly.
17:05
Speaker 1: And now now everybody has access to these things. You know,
17:09
Speaker 1: they can track you. And you know, I know Nancy,
17:11
Speaker 1: our friend, is very you know, she uses her her
17:15
Speaker 1: you know, locate my yeah, you know, yeah, my iPhone,
17:19
Speaker 1: and she uses that with her kids. You know, she
17:21
Speaker 1: talks about the twins all the time. I understand that,
17:24
Speaker 1: and it does create maybe a level of security, but
17:27
Speaker 1: there's also a real terrifying element to this that somebody
17:32
Speaker 1: that you no longer want to be domiciled with, obviously
17:37
Speaker 1: you know, has the ability, that has access to the
17:40
Speaker 1: technology and that can use it. Technology is great, man,
17:44
Speaker 1: But I'll tell you what, buddy, it's really got it downside.
17:46
Speaker 3: So those track of things you mentioned actually have done
17:48
Speaker 3: a couple of stories on this with Nancy about you know,
17:51
Speaker 3: people using those in a bar situation, driving in at first,
17:55
Speaker 3: things like that to a track of woman's movements. And
17:58
Speaker 3: there are ways for you to protect yourself about it.
18:01
Speaker 3: If you don't know what we're talking about, please look
18:02
Speaker 3: it up. There are ways to protect yourself from somebody
18:06
Speaker 3: unknowingly tagging you like that, and you can prevent it
18:08
Speaker 3: from happening to you. So now, with regard to her
18:11
Speaker 3: having this tracking device on her vehicle, they were able
18:15
Speaker 3: to trace it back to her husband, her ex husband,
18:17
Speaker 3: David Hernandez, probably by purchasing it online. They're not cheap.
18:21
Speaker 3: We'll get into that over the next couple of days.
18:23
Speaker 3: I can tell you that I'll be looking it up.
18:25
Speaker 3: Some of the rest of you will as well, because
18:28
Speaker 3: it is not just spooky, it's dangerous. So as they're
18:33
Speaker 3: investigating it, Joe, they're putting these things together. I mean,
18:37
Speaker 3: we've talked about how the person you're closest to is
18:40
Speaker 3: the first suspect and it goes out from there. And
18:43
Speaker 3: in this case, you have a soon to be ex
18:47
Speaker 3: husband in estranged situation and he has been showing a
18:51
Speaker 3: number of behaviors that are very worrisome to probably her friends,
18:55
Speaker 3: other members that she worked with, things like that. So
18:58
Speaker 3: police have their hands full right away with who they're
19:00
Speaker 3: looking at as possible suspects. But again, it was a
19:05
Speaker 3: scene that had been staged. You know what a scene
19:09
Speaker 3: looks like when you go to it, Joe as a
19:11
Speaker 3: death investigator. Police know what a robbery scene looks like,
19:16
Speaker 3: and they know when something doesn't ring true. Correct, Yeah, yeah,
19:20
Speaker 3: you do.
19:20
Speaker 1: And sometimes you'll see with the staging staging scenes, first off,
19:25
Speaker 1: it's very difficult when somebody has got an open head
19:29
Speaker 1: injury and they have obviously bled out, it's very difficult
19:34
Speaker 1: to kind of mask that if you're the perpetrator. However,
19:39
Speaker 1: when you have a true staged scene, you'll see many
19:44
Speaker 1: times these kind of half hearted efforts to open drawers up,
19:48
Speaker 1: maybe pull a few things out, that sort of thing.
19:50
Speaker 1: It won't be the individual will not necessarily be all
19:54
Speaker 1: in on it. Because when you think of like a
19:57
Speaker 1: robbery or burglary that turns into you know, a murder, robbery, murder,
20:04
Speaker 1: when you see that at a scene when it's true,
20:07
Speaker 1: you'll see all kinds of crap that's broken, turned over,
20:11
Speaker 1: busted into a million pieces, where they're digging for something
20:15
Speaker 1: and it looks like they're in a frenzy. I've had
20:17
Speaker 1: several cases where you have people that are in an
20:20
Speaker 1: addictive phase in their life and all they want is
20:23
Speaker 1: to score. They just want to score whatever dope that
20:26
Speaker 1: they're addicted to, and it will it looks like a
20:28
Speaker 1: madman has gone through the house, and it's terrifying. And
20:32
Speaker 1: there have been times I've worked these cases obviously where
20:36
Speaker 1: there's somebody that's not i mean, who suspects this, who
20:39
Speaker 1: expects it, you know, and you walk into your home
20:42
Speaker 1: and there's this raving maniac in there, and they kill
20:47
Speaker 1: you with a weapon of convenience. Most of the time,
20:50
Speaker 1: but police can kind of understand, I think relative to staging,
20:57
Speaker 1: one of the first things we're going to look for
20:59
Speaker 1: is and you hear talk about it all the time,
21:01
Speaker 1: is is there evidence of forced entry at the scene,
21:04
Speaker 1: because forced entry implies that you had to gain access
21:10
Speaker 1: where you were not allowed to be accessing an area
21:13
Speaker 1: you had a key or maybe familiarity where you can
21:15
Speaker 1: knock on the door and somebody's gonna let you in,
21:17
Speaker 1: and so yeah, the police have a have a way
21:20
Speaker 1: of doing that. But I gotta I gotta tell you,
21:23
Speaker 1: David kind of kind of jumped ahead a little bit.
21:25
Speaker 1: I wanted to. I had an idea that kind of
21:29
Speaker 1: came to mind. You had mentioned a few moments ago
21:32
Speaker 1: about the lilies that she is highly allergic to, and
21:36
Speaker 1: both these individuals are also in the medical field. Now
21:39
Speaker 1: just give me a little rope here, because I know
21:41
Speaker 1: that this might this might run run a field, and
21:45
Speaker 1: you know you but I'm really wondering here, if you
21:48
Speaker 1: have knowledge that someone is specifically allergic to something and
21:55
Speaker 1: you send it to them, are you holding out hope
21:57
Speaker 1: that if they hold these things, if they have them
22:00
Speaker 1: adjacent to them, they're going to have an anaphylactic event
22:04
Speaker 1: where they begin to swell, their airway is going to
22:08
Speaker 1: begin to close. You'll see their face turned red. And
22:11
Speaker 1: interestingly enough day people might laugh at that. I actually
22:15
Speaker 1: had a lady years and years ago that committed suicide
22:19
Speaker 1: visa vis anaphylaxis, and you know how she accomplished it.
22:23
Speaker 1: She was allergic to any kind of shellfish and she
22:27
Speaker 1: went to a buffet with her husband and sat across
22:29
Speaker 1: the table and just jammed her face with bail trimp
22:33
Speaker 1: and he knew. He was like, what what are you doing?
22:36
Speaker 1: You know, like this And before you knew it, she
22:39
Speaker 1: you know, she didn't have an EpiPen. I don't even
22:42
Speaker 1: think there was bena drill handy, and you get to
22:44
Speaker 1: that point. I don't know that Benadryla is going to
22:46
Speaker 1: touch the situation. But she went into cardial respiratory arrest
22:50
Speaker 1: right there and they ran a coat and she died
22:52
Speaker 1: at the hospital. And she had been suffering with depression
22:55
Speaker 1: all that sort of thing. So this is interesting. It's
22:57
Speaker 1: an interesting thought for me as an instigator. I really
23:02
Speaker 1: want to know was he trying to weaponize lilies? I
23:05
Speaker 1: think that that's a fascinating point along this because if
23:08
Speaker 1: you have knowledge that she has a reaction to these,
23:13
Speaker 1: is that what you're trying to do.
23:15
Speaker 2: That boggles my mind.
23:17
Speaker 1: I know, it's bizarre, isn't it.
23:18
Speaker 3: When I saw the death flower headline on this story. Yeah, okay,
23:22
Speaker 3: that's kind of merterious. But I was thinking it was
23:24
Speaker 3: one of those stinky flowers that when they open up,
23:26
Speaker 3: they smell bad and when you feel like you're going
23:28
Speaker 3: to die.
23:28
Speaker 1: Yeah, but I think those things. I think they weigh
23:30
Speaker 1: like two tons, like every five years or something. That's
23:33
Speaker 1: that's what I was thinking. So is it like feed
23:35
Speaker 1: me seymore in the basement. No, And I'm not saying
23:38
Speaker 1: that lilies are fatal, but any kind of allergic reaction
23:42
Speaker 1: that you can have to anything, I don't.
23:44
Speaker 2: You know, I wonder if.
23:46
Speaker 3: Neither of us are lawyers or anything else. But it
23:49
Speaker 3: makes you wonder if you know somebody is allergic to
23:51
Speaker 3: something and you tried to get it in their face
23:55
Speaker 3: to cause them pain and you know whatever. I wonder
23:58
Speaker 3: if there is not an assault charge waiting it's happened.
24:01
Speaker 1: Hey, That's exactly what I was thinking about, because if
24:03
Speaker 1: you have four knowledge and listen, it's hard. You know,
24:06
Speaker 1: when you get into the realm of medicine, when you're
24:09
Speaker 1: certified a registered nurse, you understand allergic reactions, and then
24:15
Speaker 1: on top of that, you're domiciled with this person, you're married,
24:18
Speaker 1: to them. You're going to know that intimate detail so
24:21
Speaker 1: much to the point that this individual may have chosen
24:25
Speaker 1: to send it. I don't know. Maybe he thought that
24:27
Speaker 1: she liked Lili's. But I got to tell you, if
24:29
Speaker 1: I was a betting man and I'm working this case
24:32
Speaker 1: and she's got a history of allergic reactions to these flowers,
24:36
Speaker 1: I think that it would be something worth kind of
24:38
Speaker 1: digging into and anything else. I'm very curious about this case, which,
24:45
Speaker 1: by the way, at this point time has not been adjudicated.
24:48
Speaker 1: This is a recent case, so this man is innocent
24:51
Speaker 1: until proven guilty. But I'd have to think if I
24:55
Speaker 1: were in the middle of this thing working it, I
24:57
Speaker 1: don't want to know if he had ever made any
24:58
Speaker 1: other kind of efforts at harming her anyway. It's almost
25:02
Speaker 1: like kind of a passive intimidation tactic. You know. You
25:06
Speaker 1: can imagine what she thought when she received these, Wow,
25:11
Speaker 1: I've got flowers. Oh no, they're lilies. It's so bizarre.
25:15
Speaker 1: But you know that at the end of the day,
25:17
Speaker 1: that's that's not what it came down to. But I
25:19
Speaker 1: really wonder, Dave, I really wonder if those lilies, we're
25:25
Speaker 1: not a portent of something far more sinister and evil
25:47
Speaker 1: investigations are. They're not instantaneous. It's not like you've got
25:52
Speaker 1: a bowl of ramen and you pour hot water in
25:55
Speaker 1: it and suddenly you've got a meal. It's not like that.
25:57
Speaker 1: It's not instantaneous. Really good investigations take a period of
26:02
Speaker 1: time because they're so intricate. I like to compare them
26:07
Speaker 1: in my mind, always envision them as spiderwebs, and you've
26:11
Speaker 1: got all this directionality, you know, that kind of go
26:13
Speaker 1: and it intersects with these things. And when you get
26:15
Speaker 1: that vision in your mind, it's actually helped me, believe
26:18
Speaker 1: it or not, when I can kind of sexualize or
26:21
Speaker 1: compartmentalize investigations because I know what my role is in
26:24
Speaker 1: the investigation. I don't have anything else most of the
26:26
Speaker 1: time to do with anybody else's roles. So I think
26:30
Speaker 1: that that's a valuable thing to keep in mind. But Dave,
26:33
Speaker 1: you were telling me that in mister Nandez's death that
26:38
Speaker 1: it took a little bit of time before they finally
26:41
Speaker 1: settled on a suspect.
26:43
Speaker 3: Well, they had to figure out, they had to figure
26:45
Speaker 3: out what happened. They know they have a dead forty
26:49
Speaker 3: five year old woman, who was beaten to death.
26:51
Speaker 2: They know the.
26:52
Speaker 3: Weapon was that there was a blunt forest instrument and
26:54
Speaker 3: a sharp edged instrument. So they're trying to put all
26:58
Speaker 3: this together, and you know, they probably had their eyes
27:02
Speaker 3: on this soon to be x just because they were
27:06
Speaker 3: able to uncover fairly quickly what he had been doing
27:09
Speaker 3: in terms of stalking and the police actually terms of
27:12
Speaker 3: that he had been stalking. And again, this is an allegation.
27:17
Speaker 3: Now this is a current case, and everyone is innocent
27:22
Speaker 3: until they're proven guilty in the court of law. But
27:24
Speaker 3: in this particular case, they were able to build enough
27:26
Speaker 3: evidence over a couple of weeks to realize that, yes,
27:29
Speaker 3: this David Hernandez is our suspect. But that was through
27:33
Speaker 3: just regular police work. And there was one thing that
27:36
Speaker 3: they know, Where's where is the instrument of death? Where
27:41
Speaker 3: is this object that we're looking for. They kind of
27:44
Speaker 3: thought it was a hammer, They kind of were leaning
27:46
Speaker 3: that way, but they couldn't figure out, couldn't find it.
27:49
Speaker 3: It was about a month into the investigation when investigators
27:54
Speaker 3: were able to get surveillance footage of La Paza train.
28:00
Speaker 3: And I always thought, like, I'm mispronouncing that, no, okay,
28:04
Speaker 3: and I'm sure, they were trying to figure out path
28:08
Speaker 3: of movement and things like that of where an individual
28:11
Speaker 3: would go. But in this particular case, a month into
28:15
Speaker 3: the investigation, they get video surveillance video that is around
28:19
Speaker 3: Lake ponsa train and they saw David Hernandez pull over
28:24
Speaker 3: on the causeway and they actually said they saw him.
28:31
Speaker 3: This is what the Jimmy Travis is the chief operating
28:34
Speaker 3: officer and the Sheriff's office there, and he said, you
28:38
Speaker 3: can see objects being thrown from the car. You see
28:44
Speaker 3: it hit the water splashing, So they know he's thrown
28:50
Speaker 3: something big enough and heavy enough to create that type
28:54
Speaker 3: of reaction in the water. So what do you think
28:57
Speaker 3: they did? They called out the dive team up and
29:01
Speaker 3: they put divers in the water, and all I could
29:04
Speaker 3: think of, Joe, I bet anybody driving along the causeway
29:10
Speaker 3: there wanting to throw something would not consider they were
29:13
Speaker 3: on surreulance camera.
29:14
Speaker 2: I wouldn't think it.
29:16
Speaker 1: They wouldn't. And first off, we're talking about literally the
29:19
Speaker 1: world's longest bridge, and that's the Causeway bridge over Lake
29:24
Speaker 1: Pontchraff spent unfortunately, more time on that bridge over the
29:29
Speaker 1: course of my career when I was with the Jefferson
29:31
Speaker 1: Parish Corners office. And is it wide, Joe, Oh, really,
29:36
Speaker 1: it's four lanes. It's four lanes. You have two lanes
29:41
Speaker 1: southbound and two lanes northbound, and it has guardrails. My
29:46
Speaker 1: family has a long history with Lake Post Train. Matter
29:49
Speaker 1: of fact, my ancestors and my ancestors actually opened the
29:52
Speaker 1: very first ferry that ever went across Lake Pontch Train
29:57
Speaker 1: in the late seventeen hundreds. They were bringing wood. There
30:01
Speaker 1: was no other way to get to New Orleans other
30:02
Speaker 1: than coming up the Mississippi River or down the Mississippi
30:06
Speaker 1: River from Baton Rouge, or coming up through the Gulf
30:09
Speaker 1: and through the Marshes. And so my ancestors built one
30:13
Speaker 1: of the first ferries, Killian's Ferry. And there's a little
30:15
Speaker 1: village on Lake Pontrain called Killian Wow. And so.
30:22
Speaker 3: I'm gonna have to go there and say, y'all know, Joe.
30:25
Speaker 1: No, they will not. And so and I love Pontcetrain.
30:29
Speaker 1: I fished on Potch Train. And here's something unique about it.
30:32
Speaker 1: And I know a lot of our our friends out
30:34
Speaker 1: there have have certainly visited it over the years. And
30:38
Speaker 1: people love to drive on the causeway to say that
30:40
Speaker 1: they've been on the world's long spridge, likely just over
30:42
Speaker 1: twenty three miles in length.
30:43
Speaker 2: It takes a lot. Goodness, I didn't know it was
30:45
Speaker 2: that long.
30:46
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's certain points where you can't see either shore.
30:50
Speaker 2: But you just see water.
30:52
Speaker 1: You see water, yeah, and then eventually you'll see land,
30:56
Speaker 1: you know, on the north shore, you know, kind of
30:58
Speaker 1: poking up and and everything's flat. Obviously, it's not like
31:02
Speaker 1: there's any hills surrounding Lake pots Train.
31:04
Speaker 2: Everything is direction.
31:07
Speaker 1: But here's something interesting about Lake Pontcha Train. Lake Potchtrain
31:10
Speaker 1: is actually an estuary, and it's one of the largest
31:14
Speaker 1: estuaries in the world, and that it is a lake.
31:17
Speaker 1: They call it a lake, but it's it comes off
31:21
Speaker 1: of the Gulf of Mexico, and the Mississippi River has
31:26
Speaker 1: an influence on it too, and all the various tributaries.
31:29
Speaker 1: Lots of life in this thing, and so you can
31:32
Speaker 1: actually find out towards the gulf. You'll find more saltwater
31:36
Speaker 1: species out there, redfish and speckled trout and all that
31:39
Speaker 1: sort of thing. But you go go back to the
31:41
Speaker 1: west and you can start catching things like crappie or
31:47
Speaker 1: as the Cajun say, saku lea and largemouth bass and
31:51
Speaker 1: all these sorts of things. And so you've got this environment.
31:55
Speaker 1: And as big as that lake is, Dave, I'm gonna
31:58
Speaker 1: throw some knowledge on you here real quick. You might
32:00
Speaker 1: not have ever heard Jennut Lake averages only thirteen to
32:05
Speaker 1: fourteen feet in depth. Oh wow, as big as this
32:09
Speaker 1: thing is because it's vast. I mean, it's not like
32:11
Speaker 1: the size of Great Lakes, but it's vast, and it's
32:13
Speaker 1: got a real muddy bottom. There is a central area
32:17
Speaker 1: that's like sixty to sixty five feet and you know
32:21
Speaker 1: what that is. That's a shipping channel that was actually
32:23
Speaker 1: cut in there. And so naturally it's just it's an estuary.
32:27
Speaker 1: It's not like a real deep You go to the
32:30
Speaker 1: Great Lakes, you know, and you've got these hundreds of
32:33
Speaker 1: feet of depth up there. It's not like that. And
32:34
Speaker 1: so you have a hurricane that comes through there. It's
32:37
Speaker 1: like the meteorologists and the hydrologists talk about, it's like
32:42
Speaker 1: having water in a saucer and the wind blows and
32:46
Speaker 1: it'll just blow water. That's one of the problems you
32:49
Speaker 1: had with Katrina. Ponchtrain played a big role in the flooding.
32:53
Speaker 1: But when here's the other thing about this dive team,
32:57
Speaker 1: which I could never do diving claustrophobic. It terrifies me.
33:01
Speaker 1: I've got a good buddy of mine, Bobby Chacone, who
33:04
Speaker 1: is who ran the FBI dive team, and he he
33:09
Speaker 1: is a he's a beast. I mean he is. He'll
33:13
Speaker 1: you know, he he's done it all, he's seen it all.
33:16
Speaker 1: It terrifies me. But you know, when you get into
33:19
Speaker 1: poncha train, brother, you can't even see your hand in
33:24
Speaker 1: front of your face, you know. So the fact that
33:28
Speaker 1: they've got this Hernandez guy on video gives him an
33:35
Speaker 1: idea of where to start. And also they did this
33:38
Speaker 1: recovery in Jefferson Parish, so he traveled through a couple
33:43
Speaker 1: of parishes and on the bridge in order to facilitate this.
33:47
Speaker 1: And the fact that he did it out there is
33:51
Speaker 1: amazing because you have what are called the Causeway Bridge Police,
33:55
Speaker 1: and literally all these people do is police the bridge.
33:59
Speaker 1: They run radar there always out there. So that gives
34:02
Speaker 1: you an idea of how embolden he was, how confident
34:05
Speaker 1: he was. And there is no room to pass on
34:07
Speaker 1: this thing, man, no room to pass. You would have
34:10
Speaker 1: to put your flashes on and say a heil Mary,
34:15
Speaker 1: and go out there and hope that you're not going
34:17
Speaker 1: to get crushed, and go out there quick enough to
34:21
Speaker 1: drop it and then scoot back to your vehicle and
34:26
Speaker 1: start heading in the opposite direction. And that's the other thing.
34:30
Speaker 1: You start heading in the opposite direction. You got to
34:32
Speaker 1: find a place to turn around.
34:34
Speaker 2: Dude.
34:34
Speaker 3: Let me tell you this though, Joe. Yeah, he stayed
34:37
Speaker 3: in his car. He stayed in his car and tossed
34:42
Speaker 3: the items from the car.
34:44
Speaker 1: Well, that's that's an interesting, interesting point that he didn't
34:48
Speaker 1: get out, And I wonder if he actually came to
34:50
Speaker 1: a full stop to do it.
34:51
Speaker 3: Well, you know, I'm wondering the same thing. That's why
34:54
Speaker 3: I was curious, because I don't know. I'm trying to
34:56
Speaker 3: visualize this, and I can't figure out how wide the
34:58
Speaker 3: bridge is. So we're not talking about a wide area.
35:01
Speaker 1: No, no, no, no, So.
35:02
Speaker 3: We are time he stayed in the car, I'm guessing
35:05
Speaker 3: he just thought I'm gonna do it right here and
35:10
Speaker 3: just out the door, you go out the window.
35:12
Speaker 1: Yeah, and he obviously didn't do it in the shipping channel,
35:15
Speaker 1: which the causeway has got this big hump. It looks
35:20
Speaker 1: like a camel just rising up. It's this gigantic hump
35:24
Speaker 1: that's right in the center of it. And that's so
35:25
Speaker 1: that larger ships can get through that thing and stay
35:29
Speaker 1: in the channel, can stay in the shipping channel. Now,
35:32
Speaker 1: he may have had a better shot of them not
35:34
Speaker 1: being able to recover this thing if he had stopped
35:36
Speaker 1: on top of that. But the problem was stopping and
35:39
Speaker 1: he knows this. The problem was stopping on the top.
35:41
Speaker 1: There are two towers up there, and they look like
35:46
Speaker 1: I remember when I was a little kid, and I
35:48
Speaker 1: see them. They look like air control towers, you know,
35:53
Speaker 1: with the glass that goes all the way around it,
35:55
Speaker 1: so that these guys that are in there can see
35:57
Speaker 1: it for miles. You can see the landscape or the
36:01
Speaker 1: water skate for miles and miles around. They've got ships
36:04
Speaker 1: that are incoming and all that sort of thing. And
36:05
Speaker 1: so you know, you're damned if you do. You're damn
36:09
Speaker 1: if you don't. If he goes to that portion right there,
36:13
Speaker 1: he might hit the shipping channel where this thing's going
36:15
Speaker 1: to go down to a depth of you know, sixty
36:17
Speaker 1: maybe seventy feet, I don't know, and settle down in
36:20
Speaker 1: that mud. But they caught it soon enough so that
36:24
Speaker 1: these poor souls on this dive team had to go
36:28
Speaker 1: down there. And when I tell you this is like,
36:31
Speaker 1: this is hero stuff to me because it's something I
36:34
Speaker 1: couldn't do. When they're down underwater, they're literally feeling around
36:40
Speaker 1: with their hands, and trust me, there's more than an
36:46
Speaker 1: item that this guy throughout over the edge of that bridge.
36:49
Speaker 1: Lord only knows what you can find down there. I
36:52
Speaker 1: see all these kids on YouTube nowadays and they do
36:55
Speaker 1: the magnet fishing. Have you seen this where there's tassa
36:58
Speaker 1: And it's pretty fascinating see what they come up with.
37:00
Speaker 1: And sometimes they come up with with weapons involved in homicides.
37:04
Speaker 1: But you know, there's it's a heavily traveled road. It's
37:09
Speaker 1: and you think that anything that you that you toss
37:12
Speaker 1: over is gone forever and ever. Amen, And that ain't
37:16
Speaker 1: necessarily the case. And what did they wind up finding today?
37:19
Speaker 3: They found exactly what you were talking about earlier, on
37:22
Speaker 3: a large hammer. Now the they pointed out that because
37:28
Speaker 3: it was on video. That's what the sheriff actually says.
37:31
Speaker 3: He thought he was throwing away these items someplace that
37:34
Speaker 3: they would be gone forever, never realizing that the area
37:38
Speaker 3: he was in. He was in video surveillance while he
37:43
Speaker 3: was doing it, so they knew exactly where he was
37:47
Speaker 3: on the bridge when he threw the objects in, and
37:51
Speaker 3: they were because they saw the splash.
37:53
Speaker 2: They knew where it entered the water.
37:55
Speaker 3: Now, finding a hammer, a large hammer, gonna have some
37:59
Speaker 3: weight on it. It's not going to drift a whole lot.
38:01
Speaker 3: I don't know how the current moves, but I'm guessing
38:04
Speaker 3: it's probably not moving a whole lot.
38:06
Speaker 1: No, and then and then once it like I said,
38:10
Speaker 1: once it goes, once it starts to drift down, it's
38:12
Speaker 1: going it's going to land in this silt, right and
38:18
Speaker 1: once it gets embedded in that silt, it ain't going
38:21
Speaker 1: to where as a matter of fact, on another interesting point,
38:26
Speaker 1: down on the far end of the lake, the western end,
38:31
Speaker 1: there is an entire I might be wrong. I think
38:33
Speaker 1: it's an entire seven O seven that is beneath the
38:37
Speaker 1: water there, and it is when I say beneath the water.
38:42
Speaker 1: It took off from what used it's Huey P.
38:45
Speaker 2: Long.
38:46
Speaker 1: It's actually the Louis Armstrong Airport. Now it's what it's called.
38:50
Speaker 1: It used to be called Moison plane took off in
38:53
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty five, went off the end of that northern
38:57
Speaker 1: runway and just nosedived right into the lake. And I
39:01
Speaker 1: don't know that they ever recovered all of the bodies
39:03
Speaker 1: out of there, and that plane is still there and
39:06
Speaker 1: it's buried in that silt, and so that's how sticky
39:10
Speaker 1: this thing is. So the fact that they did recover
39:13
Speaker 1: it is quite amazing to me. I'm fascinated, but I
39:17
Speaker 1: think that look, you know, David Hernandez has only been charged.
39:25
Speaker 1: He remains innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.
39:31
Speaker 1: But just so we understand, Lisa Hernandez god rest her
39:36
Speaker 1: soul has her final fatal diagnosis was blunt force instrument
39:43
Speaker 1: and sharp force instrument related death. And David Hernandez was
39:49
Speaker 1: actually charged with the second Grey murder and obstruction of justice.
39:56
Speaker 1: I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is Body Backs