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Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan: Massacre Unveiled - Angela Rowe & Her Children · Crime Stories with Nancy Grace

0:08
Speaker 1: Bodybags with Joseph Scott Morgan. Some folks say life is hard,
0:23
Speaker 1: don't do anything to make it any more difficult. One
0:27
Speaker 1: of the things that I do know from experience because
0:29
Speaker 1: I was raised by a single mom for a period
0:34
Speaker 1: of time in my life. Life is particularly difficult for
0:39
Speaker 1: a mama who is raising babies and is trying to
0:44
Speaker 1: make ends meet. It's particularly hard when you might feel
0:49
Speaker 1: lonely and you feel like you need somebody in your life.
0:53
Speaker 1: The problem is is that there's not a lot of
0:55
Speaker 1: folks to choose from out there. If you've got three kids,
0:59
Speaker 1: who's going to take on that burden with you? It's
1:02
Speaker 1: a big ass, But loneliness abides in that world, and
1:07
Speaker 1: it's hard. It's important to remember that you never know
1:12
Speaker 1: who is going to enter your life at any point
1:15
Speaker 1: in time. It could be a saint, or it could
1:18
Speaker 1: be somebody that has very very bad intentions.
1:23
Speaker 2: Angela Raau lived with her children in a Saint Louis suburb.
1:27
Speaker 2: Her family became worried when they hadn't heard from her
1:30
Speaker 2: and asked police to make a welfare check. Dowords at
1:34
Speaker 2: her home were locked, so police climbed through a window.
1:38
Speaker 2: Angela Roau was found dead, covered by blankets. She had
1:42
Speaker 2: been shot four times. Her three young children were also shot,
1:46
Speaker 2: their bodies left lined up on a bed.
1:51
Speaker 1: Today, we're going to talk about the execution homicides of
1:57
Speaker 1: Angela Rowe and her three children, Alexis, Korea and Tyrese.
2:03
Speaker 1: I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is body bags, single motherhood, Dave.
2:13
Speaker 1: It's a tough thing, even under the best of circumstances,
2:17
Speaker 1: to try to make ends meet and to take care
2:19
Speaker 1: of them babies all the way to adulthood. And when
2:22
Speaker 1: you've got kids that are ranging in age from ten
2:27
Speaker 1: to six to five, what a thing to have to juggle,
2:31
Speaker 1: What a dynamic to have to juggle to make sure
2:34
Speaker 1: all those needs are being met.
2:36
Speaker 3: When you said it's a big ask, I was thinking
2:39
Speaker 3: along the same lines. This is a woman who has
2:42
Speaker 3: three children, she's on her own. We have a crime
2:46
Speaker 3: scene that actually even the medical examiner or the prosecutor
2:51
Speaker 3: rather didn't know exactly when the murders occurred. So let's
2:57
Speaker 3: start there. How is it possible that you have four people,
3:02
Speaker 3: a mom and three children are murdered and you cannot
3:06
Speaker 3: come with any certainty of what day or time they
3:11
Speaker 3: were actually murdered.
3:13
Speaker 1: You look to the science, You look to the science.
3:15
Speaker 1: You look to the science, and sometimes there are so
3:18
Speaker 1: many variables. And let's think about this. If you do
3:21
Speaker 1: a scientific experiment, you can change the outcome of that
3:26
Speaker 1: experiment by adjusting certain variables within the formatting of that experiment.
3:32
Speaker 1: And maybe you're trying to I don't know, if you
3:34
Speaker 1: want to get sinister about it. Maybe you're trying to
3:37
Speaker 1: influence outcomes in a way that you want them to
3:40
Speaker 1: be and you're not doing true science at that point
3:43
Speaker 1: in time. You just kind of let the cards follow
3:46
Speaker 1: where they may. However, what we do know is that
3:50
Speaker 1: when it comes to things like interpretation of postmortem interval PMI,
3:56
Speaker 1: there are any number of factors along the way that
3:58
Speaker 1: are going to impact how bodies change after death. In
4:04
Speaker 1: this particular case, in this brutal homicide involving this young
4:10
Speaker 1: mother her and let's face it, this case, if you
4:17
Speaker 1: were to qualify it numerically, they claim that if you
4:21
Speaker 1: start to get up into the range of three and
4:25
Speaker 1: then you go to four, you can technically begin to
4:28
Speaker 1: use the term mass homicide. Now, let that sink in
4:31
Speaker 1: just for a second. A mass homicide because it is
4:35
Speaker 1: not to diminish other people that have lost loved ones
4:39
Speaker 1: as a result of violence. But when you start to
4:43
Speaker 1: rise above a single individual and you start to get
4:45
Speaker 1: up into the three, the four, those counts like that.
4:49
Speaker 1: If this had been say in an environment like a
4:52
Speaker 1: public gathering place, as opposed to a home, you would
4:55
Speaker 1: hear the media throwing around mass homicide. But this is
4:58
Speaker 1: contained within a home, and containment within the home goes
5:03
Speaker 1: to this idea of trying to measure how long someone
5:07
Speaker 1: has been down. In a particular case, the bodies are
5:11
Speaker 1: protected from view, so you don't have, say, as opposed
5:16
Speaker 1: to a public place where a mass homicide will take place,
5:19
Speaker 1: these bodies are all laying together, contained within a physical
5:24
Speaker 1: structure that is in fact locked from the interior this home,
5:29
Speaker 1: and you can't observe the bodies going through these physical changes.
5:34
Speaker 1: You're essentially there to see what all that remains. And
5:39
Speaker 1: in this case, which I find quite fascinating, this event
5:44
Speaker 1: is actually occurring in November of two thousand and four.
5:49
Speaker 1: These bodies of these four victims were not found until
5:53
Speaker 1: December the third of two thousand and four, so you've
5:55
Speaker 1: got this huge lag in time and you begin to
5:59
Speaker 1: think about what was occurring relative to the environment in
6:02
Speaker 1: which they were found, what was going on from a
6:05
Speaker 1: decompositional perspective as to their placement, the internal factors that
6:11
Speaker 1: are affecting the changes of the body, and also are
6:15
Speaker 1: you losing evidence over a period of time, and so
6:19
Speaker 1: those are all things that are considered when we're assessing
6:22
Speaker 1: a scene. And sometimes it's that idea. The further you
6:25
Speaker 1: move down that linear timeline, as you're heading out away
6:30
Speaker 1: from that critical moment in which these people lost their lives,
6:34
Speaker 1: everything is changing all the while, that dynamic is changing
6:39
Speaker 1: all the while. So it has an impact as to
6:42
Speaker 1: how you're going to assess the scene, and in this
6:45
Speaker 1: particular case, it certainly did. I think, Dave, you.
6:48
Speaker 3: Know, I'm looking at the actual temperatures for November twenty
6:52
Speaker 3: second November twenty third, in that time period, we're looking
6:55
Speaker 3: out of two thousand and four in Saint Louis, Missouri,
6:58
Speaker 3: and I'm wondering, Joe, I thought, and it's because of television.
7:01
Speaker 3: I know this that I thought. You guys, you go
7:04
Speaker 3: up on the scene and you make a few notes,
7:07
Speaker 3: and yeah, they based on stomach contents and whatever. This
7:12
Speaker 3: person died at nine point fifty eight pm three weeks
7:14
Speaker 3: ago on a Tuesday. I thought that was something you
7:17
Speaker 3: guys did. But I find out now, of course, having
7:21
Speaker 3: been together with you for so many cases, that there
7:24
Speaker 3: is so much more involved. From a temperature standpoint. We
7:28
Speaker 3: know that the bodies were not fresh. Is that the
7:31
Speaker 3: right term?
7:32
Speaker 1: No, it's a term we use. Actually, let me, I'll
7:34
Speaker 1: go ahead and plainly stated in my own verbiage and
7:38
Speaker 1: with many of my colleagues, we refer to the fresh dead. So, yeah,
7:41
Speaker 1: you're absolutely right.
7:42
Speaker 3: They have been dead for at least a little period
7:45
Speaker 3: of time, and you have to figure out when this occurred.
7:48
Speaker 3: And in this particular case, day and time really mean
7:52
Speaker 3: a lot. I wonder when you get to a crime
7:56
Speaker 3: scene like this, how do you move forward to find
8:00
Speaker 3: the things you need? Forensically when you're looking at a
8:04
Speaker 3: mom and three children. Now, look, the mom's an adult
8:09
Speaker 3: and she has more wounds than the children. But how
8:13
Speaker 3: do you maintain your composure when you're looking at children
8:18
Speaker 3: a five year old, a six year old, and a
8:20
Speaker 3: ten year old.
8:21
Speaker 1: It's almost as if you stand there. First off, it's
8:24
Speaker 1: very surreal. It's very surreal. It was always very surreal
8:28
Speaker 1: for me. I can't speak to other investigators, all right,
8:31
Speaker 1: but when you begin to try to take in what
8:35
Speaker 1: you're observing relative to the victims, that part of your
8:39
Speaker 1: humanity is looking at these children. We're talking about kids
8:43
Speaker 1: that are ten and six and five that are laying
8:48
Speaker 1: immediately adjacent to their mom's body. It's a surreal moment.
8:52
Speaker 1: Many times it's kind of tried to say, you sold
8:54
Speaker 1: your own and then you deal with all of that
8:57
Speaker 1: in the aftermath. But I have found myself over the
9:00
Speaker 1: years as a death investigator being very, very distracted when
9:04
Speaker 1: you're on a case like this. If you're talking about
9:07
Speaker 1: a singular adult, all right, and you're working the case,
9:11
Speaker 1: it's very easy to kind of adjust your mindset to
9:15
Speaker 1: being very clinical. But there's that one little thread of
9:19
Speaker 1: humanity as you begin to look and you're trying to
9:22
Speaker 1: take in everything that you're seeing, and it's almost as
9:25
Speaker 1: if Dave, the angel of death, has walked through this
9:29
Speaker 1: place and has reaped this grim harvest. Because it's hard
9:35
Speaker 1: to set aside what you're witnessing and rely completely on
9:40
Speaker 1: the science, and in this case, we certainly had to.
10:01
Speaker 1: No scene is the same as the other ones. Keep
10:05
Speaker 1: that in mind. As an investigator, you always have to
10:08
Speaker 1: be clear headed. I don't like to say open minded.
10:12
Speaker 1: There's an old phrase that I've heard many years ago says,
10:14
Speaker 1: be where the man that claims to have an open mind,
10:18
Speaker 1: there's a high probability his brains landed on the floor
10:21
Speaker 1: some time ago. You have to remain objective and clear
10:25
Speaker 1: minded when you walk into a scene, and certainly you
10:28
Speaker 1: have to get past all of that, all of those
10:31
Speaker 1: factors that would negatively influence your ability to assess the scene.
10:36
Speaker 1: An assessment is key here because you know that when
10:39
Speaker 1: you walk in to a scene like this and there
10:42
Speaker 1: has been a lapse time, you've got your senses being affected.
10:46
Speaker 1: There's the sense of smell, there is there visual changes,
10:51
Speaker 1: So you've got the smell of decomposition in the air.
10:53
Speaker 1: And that's by a factor of four. Let's keep that
10:56
Speaker 1: in mind when you think about for each body that
11:00
Speaker 1: is there, they're decomposing. Because they're proximity to one another,
11:04
Speaker 1: they are decomposing at probably the same rate.
11:08
Speaker 3: Does temperature in the room or in the building have
11:12
Speaker 3: anything to do with the decomposition and the speed?
11:16
Speaker 1: Yeah, it does, it certainly does. It's like any other
11:18
Speaker 1: organic material. If you want to preserve it, you cool
11:23
Speaker 1: it down, or in circumstances you can freeze it. You know,
11:26
Speaker 1: decomposition never fully stops, but you can retard its development
11:33
Speaker 1: by application of cooler temperatures. So in this case, when
11:39
Speaker 1: the investigators arrive at the scene and look, I've been
11:42
Speaker 1: to Saint Louis over the years, many many times, and
11:46
Speaker 1: in late November, yeah, it can get warm during that
11:49
Speaker 1: period of time, but most of the time you need
11:52
Speaker 1: a jacket. All right, it's going to and maybe a sweater.
11:55
Speaker 1: It's going to be really cool. And they can have
11:56
Speaker 1: days when it really really gets.
11:58
Speaker 3: Cool, and in this particular case, the daytime high fifty
12:01
Speaker 3: to fifty.
12:02
Speaker 1: Four and when they walked in the temperature setting, I'm
12:05
Speaker 1: saying they You know, one of the things that you
12:07
Speaker 1: observe at a crime scene is you want to look
12:10
Speaker 1: at the thermostat. People don't think about that, but we do.
12:13
Speaker 1: We actually check thermostats and houses to see, first off,
12:16
Speaker 1: that the air is functioning, and then secondly to see
12:19
Speaker 1: what the current temperature is because that's going to give
12:22
Speaker 1: you an indication of what's referred to as an ambient
12:24
Speaker 1: environmental temperature, and that is going to directly impact the
12:29
Speaker 1: rate at which a body decomposes, and so we're faced
12:32
Speaker 1: with four The interior temperature in this home, I think
12:36
Speaker 1: was probably close to about fifty degrees. Now that is
12:39
Speaker 1: not going to that is not going to slow decomposition
12:43
Speaker 1: down to the point where it's non existent. Remembers. That
12:47
Speaker 1: doesn't happen anyway. Even if bodies are frozen. There's still
12:50
Speaker 1: going to be something going on, but it will slow it.
12:54
Speaker 1: What they were able to assess at the scene with
12:57
Speaker 1: these victims is that the bodies had actually gotten to
13:03
Speaker 1: the point where riger mortis was no longer present. Now
13:07
Speaker 1: that's key because we're not just talking about body temperature,
13:10
Speaker 1: we're talking about rigidity. And if you're out past a
13:14
Speaker 1: marker in time, that means that you're probably past that
13:18
Speaker 1: thirty six hour mark. If bodies become what we refer
13:22
Speaker 1: to as flacid, which means that if you grab the
13:26
Speaker 1: forearm or the wrist of the deceased and you attempt
13:30
Speaker 1: to manipulate the arm and it just kind of easily
13:34
Speaker 1: is moved back and forward. You can move the shoulders
13:37
Speaker 1: because riger really sets in and the shoulders very tightly.
13:40
Speaker 1: You can bend the legs, at the knees and all
13:42
Speaker 1: those sorts of things. That means that certain time has
13:47
Speaker 1: elapsed in order to facilitate that all of the lactic
13:50
Speaker 1: acid that had built up in the joints has now
13:53
Speaker 1: begun to dissipate, and so you no longer have that rigidity.
13:56
Speaker 1: You combine that with the fact that you can vision
14:00
Speaker 1: see that there are color changes going on in the body,
14:03
Speaker 1: which happens with decomposing bodies. You look for things that
14:06
Speaker 1: they're refer to as marbling, skin slippage, all of these
14:09
Speaker 1: other things that happen over a period of time.
14:12
Speaker 3: Joe, when you say skin slippage, what exactly is that.
14:16
Speaker 1: Well, with skin slippage the body, you bodies in particular,
14:21
Speaker 1: and this would have been the case here the bodies
14:25
Speaker 1: that top layer of skin, the epidermis, begins to peel,
14:30
Speaker 1: It literally begins to peel. And so when you touch
14:34
Speaker 1: the body, even with a gloved hand, and this is
14:37
Speaker 1: probably going to set some people on edge when they
14:39
Speaker 1: hear this, but if you touch a bare arm where
14:43
Speaker 1: their skin slippage, you wrap your hand, your gloved hand
14:45
Speaker 1: around the wrist and you go to move the body
14:48
Speaker 1: so you can either place in a bag or examine
14:51
Speaker 1: the body. The skin will almost always kind of move.
14:56
Speaker 1: That epidermis will move away, and you'll beg to see
15:00
Speaker 1: down into the dermis. And when I say move, just
15:03
Speaker 1: imagine if you've ever been sunburned and after a period
15:07
Speaker 1: of time, you begin to peel. Okay, that's the epidermis
15:10
Speaker 1: coming loose. Well, it happens as a normal biological process
15:14
Speaker 1: in decomposition, and again that's another time marker. So you
15:18
Speaker 1: have bodies that begin to have skin slippage. You have marbling,
15:24
Speaker 1: which occurs in decomposition, which is and this is kind
15:27
Speaker 1: of an interesting manifestation you have when we say marble.
15:32
Speaker 1: Just imagine the lines that you see in a block
15:34
Speaker 1: of marble. Okay, those little dark lines that run through it.
15:38
Speaker 1: You'll see this marbling where the blood that is contained
15:42
Speaker 1: in those superficial vessels has begun to actually decompose within
15:47
Speaker 1: the vessels. The blood decomposing in those vessels will actually
15:51
Speaker 1: begin to make them stand out externally so that you
15:55
Speaker 1: can kind of follow them. So you get these kind
15:57
Speaker 1: of curvelinear lines, if you will, that run through the body,
16:01
Speaker 1: and that's actually another sign of decomposition. So all of
16:04
Speaker 1: these things are markers along the way. In the case
16:08
Speaker 1: of this family with Angela Rowe, she's been shot multiple times,
16:14
Speaker 1: her children have been executed. Okay, you begin to try
16:19
Speaker 1: to take the measure of what you're seeing and you
16:22
Speaker 1: understand that this is not something as an investigator that
16:25
Speaker 1: happened recently, that someone was able to have access to her.
16:30
Speaker 1: And by the way, the house was locked from the
16:33
Speaker 1: interior and there was an open window on the back
16:35
Speaker 1: of the house. That whoever left that house that perpetrated
16:39
Speaker 1: this crime exited through a window and they would not
16:43
Speaker 1: have been seen necessarily walking out the front door. It
16:46
Speaker 1: was done in stealth and probably under the cover of darkness.
16:50
Speaker 1: More than likely, you have this instance where the bodies
16:55
Speaker 1: are there and you're trying to understand the dynamic of
16:58
Speaker 1: what's happened. And here's the chilling thing as an investigator,
17:02
Speaker 1: that you've got a family that has been wiped out
17:05
Speaker 1: in that moment, and all along the further you move
17:09
Speaker 1: out of time, more evidence is being lost, the physical
17:12
Speaker 1: changes are taking place, and nothing ever appears as it
17:15
Speaker 1: did on the day that the event occurred. Dave, you know,
17:39
Speaker 1: I hate the question why I think here though it's
17:42
Speaker 1: more important to try to understand who would want to
17:46
Speaker 1: eradicate a mother and her three kids. And you know,
17:50
Speaker 1: this name arose in this case, Leonard Taylor, the mother's boyfriend,
17:55
Speaker 1: and this thread that runs through Angela Rose life seems
17:59
Speaker 1: to be to this man.
18:01
Speaker 2: Leonard Taylor, was arrested in the deaths of Angelo Rowe
18:05
Speaker 2: and her children, but the case became a he said,
18:08
Speaker 2: she said situation. Taylor says he was in California when
18:12
Speaker 2: they died. Taylor left Saint Louis on November twenty sixth.
18:16
Speaker 2: He had plane tickets to California. The reservations for that
18:20
Speaker 2: flight were made on November twenty fifth. But then there's
18:24
Speaker 2: information coming from some of Taylor's family members saying he
18:28
Speaker 2: confessed and saying that he was seen disposing of a
18:32
Speaker 2: gun in a sewer near family member's home. Taylor repeatedly
18:37
Speaker 2: told police that he did not kill his girlfriend and
18:40
Speaker 2: her children.
18:41
Speaker 3: Why I was asking you earlier about the temperature and
18:44
Speaker 3: what it would have to do, you know, with decomposition,
18:47
Speaker 3: because of when the when this family was found versus
18:52
Speaker 3: when the crime occurred, when were they killed, and building
18:56
Speaker 3: that timeline is what detectives have to do to make
18:59
Speaker 3: sure where they can get the right person. All I
19:03
Speaker 3: can think, Joe, from a forensic standpoint, there's a lot
19:05
Speaker 3: of pressure on you to tell the detective where's that
19:09
Speaker 3: window that this event happened. At the time. What was
19:12
Speaker 3: Leonard Taylor doing? He was dating Angela Rowe. He had
19:16
Speaker 3: a relationship with her in Saint Louis. But this man
19:19
Speaker 3: also had a wife in California, another girlfriend in Kentucky,
19:25
Speaker 3: and he was juggling these relationships. Leonard Taylor, according to
19:30
Speaker 3: his brother, claimed that Angela Rowe was coming at him
19:35
Speaker 3: with a knife, so he shot her, and more than
19:38
Speaker 3: once because he couldn't get her to stop. That's what
19:41
Speaker 3: his brother told us about Leonard Taylor on the night
19:46
Speaker 3: this happened. So to get right down to the bottom line,
19:50
Speaker 3: Leonard Taylor was married to Debrin Williams in California. He
19:55
Speaker 3: called his brother from Angela Rowe's place and and told
20:01
Speaker 3: him that he had killed Angela. He said, I didn't
20:05
Speaker 3: mean to kill her, but she came at me with
20:07
Speaker 3: a knife and I couldn't get her off of me.
20:09
Speaker 3: He says, I shot her two or three times.
20:12
Speaker 1: I gotta ask were the ten year old the six
20:16
Speaker 1: year old and the five year old also coming at
20:18
Speaker 1: him as well.
20:19
Speaker 3: I'm wondering, Joe, what were they possibly doing other than
20:24
Speaker 3: none of this makes sense from his standpoint. You got
20:25
Speaker 3: to remember he's telling his brother the story that he
20:28
Speaker 3: thinks will make him look the least evil. But it's evil.
20:31
Speaker 3: When you kill a mother and her children, you are
20:35
Speaker 3: the definition of evil. And even if she was chasing
20:39
Speaker 3: him with a knife and the children were all coming
20:41
Speaker 3: at him with knives and his only defense was to
20:43
Speaker 3: kill him, you'd have thought he would have had some wounds,
20:46
Speaker 3: some injuries, but none.
20:48
Speaker 1: Let me kind of frame this for you too. If
20:50
Speaker 1: you think that's bad, let me throw I got another
20:54
Speaker 1: one for you. When the examination was performed on these victims,
21:00
Speaker 1: these victims of this massacre, it was determined that Angela,
21:06
Speaker 1: the mother, had multiple gunshot wounds. So she's got four
21:11
Speaker 1: gunshot wounes. She's got two to her left arm, one
21:15
Speaker 1: to her chest. And I guess what people will refer
21:18
Speaker 1: to as the coup de gras is a GSW two
21:22
Speaker 1: her head, which they believe is what finished her off.
21:26
Speaker 1: And that makes sense. You've got alexis, her ten year old,
21:31
Speaker 1: and they've both sustained gunshot wounds to the head, and
21:36
Speaker 1: then Tyrese, a five year old, has sustained a fatal
21:39
Speaker 1: gunshot one to the head.
21:41
Speaker 3: One thing to point out, Joe, is that ten year
21:43
Speaker 3: old Alexis was shot twice in the head, six year
21:46
Speaker 3: old Krea was shot twice in the head, and Tyrese,
21:49
Speaker 3: the five year old little boy, was shot once. Is
21:52
Speaker 3: there any significance to that in terms of forensics when
21:54
Speaker 3: you look at this, does it when you're looking at
21:56
Speaker 3: why did it take two here? Two here in one here?
21:59
Speaker 3: Or is it just that's the way it was?
22:02
Speaker 1: No. I think probably the more substantive consideration we have
22:06
Speaker 1: here is the fact that the forensics revealed that this
22:11
Speaker 1: was either a thirty eight caliber revolver, remember I'm saying revolver,
22:16
Speaker 1: or a three point fifty seven revolver. And when you
22:21
Speaker 1: look at this, and you know what a standard revolver
22:24
Speaker 1: holds are six rounds. Just with Angela alone, she was
22:29
Speaker 1: shot four times, and you've got Alexis who shot twice.
22:35
Speaker 1: You've got a Krea who shot twice. You see in
22:39
Speaker 1: a pattern here Now we're at six, we're at eight rounds.
22:42
Speaker 1: And then you get up to Tyrese. The five year old,
22:46
Speaker 1: he shot one more, Dave, whoever did this? When it's
22:50
Speaker 1: not like a semi automatic weapon where you've got a
22:52
Speaker 1: magazine that fits into the weapon people famously see these.
22:56
Speaker 1: You've got the slide that you charge the weapon with
22:59
Speaker 1: and fire it. Maybe you've got fourteen rounds, depending upon
23:02
Speaker 1: the weapon, you know, and it's ejecting shells. That's not
23:04
Speaker 1: what happens with a revolver. You've got six shots, so
23:09
Speaker 1: you have to literally open up the cylinder, dump out
23:14
Speaker 1: the expended rounds, then purpose to reload the weapon and
23:21
Speaker 1: fire it. So that makes this all the more ghastly
23:25
Speaker 1: when you think about it. It worked many years ago
23:27
Speaker 1: a case where three men were placed on a sofa
23:32
Speaker 1: and they were all shot multiple times with the same weapon,
23:35
Speaker 1: and it was a revolver. And I'll never forget. They
23:37
Speaker 1: were interlocked in their arms. They were forced by a
23:40
Speaker 1: drug game to hold to interlock their arms at the elbows.
23:44
Speaker 1: And those were reloads as well. And here's the image
23:47
Speaker 1: that is kind of painted. Something horrible is happening. If
23:51
Speaker 1: this is a thirty eight caliber, or it's certainly a
23:53
Speaker 1: three fifty seven, which is a magnum load, you can't
23:56
Speaker 1: get past the sound. You got these three babies, Dave,
24:00
Speaker 1: that are listening to this. They're hearing the screams. The
24:04
Speaker 1: mom has raised her arm, apparently because she's been shot
24:07
Speaker 1: twice in the arm. She has an awareness that this
24:12
Speaker 1: is the end. She screams out. And you've got these
24:15
Speaker 1: three babies that are bearing witness to this. And certainly,
24:18
Speaker 1: if they were not necessarily eyewitnesses at the time, there
24:21
Speaker 1: were certainly earwitnesses. You can't escape the report of this
24:25
Speaker 1: weapon contained within this home. In there, the sound travels.
24:30
Speaker 3: Everywhere during the time that he had to reload. Who
24:34
Speaker 3: was still alive?
24:35
Speaker 1: That's a question that only the sweet Lord above has
24:39
Speaker 1: the answer for, because we don't know. But we know that,
24:43
Speaker 1: and that adds to the level of horror here. We
24:46
Speaker 1: know that somebody had to have been alive to bear
24:50
Speaker 1: witness to this, because it appears that they were all
24:55
Speaker 1: shot with the same weapon. And as it turns out,
24:59
Speaker 1: the perpetrate in this case was witnessed throwing away a
25:04
Speaker 1: revolver into sewer to get rid of it, and they
25:08
Speaker 1: never That was one of the problems that the forensics
25:11
Speaker 1: had is that they could never get their hands, I
25:14
Speaker 1: think on this weapon to determine if it was a
25:17
Speaker 1: thirty eight or three fifty seven. These rounds are akin
25:21
Speaker 1: to one another in the sense of thirty eight. It
25:24
Speaker 1: sounds counterintuitive. It's a point thirty eight caliber is smaller
25:28
Speaker 1: than point three five seven. And when I say smaller,
25:33
Speaker 1: the actual cartridge for the three fifty seven is bigger.
25:37
Speaker 1: Remember I said it's a magnum. You can actually take
25:41
Speaker 1: a thirty eight caliber round and fire it out of
25:45
Speaker 1: a three point fifty seven magnum revolver. But you cannot
25:49
Speaker 1: do that with a three fifty seven magnum and place
25:52
Speaker 1: it into a thirty eight caliber revolver and fire it
25:54
Speaker 1: because cartridge is too big. But these rounds, when you're
25:57
Speaker 1: examining them in the ballistics lab, these rounds will come
26:02
Speaker 1: apart many times, and it's hard to determine exactly what
26:06
Speaker 1: caliber it is. And if the rounds are deformed, it's
26:10
Speaker 1: hard to kind of put your finger on that.
26:12
Speaker 3: Now, Joe, you've been through a lot of crimes over
26:14
Speaker 3: the years in terms of testifying and research, But when
26:18
Speaker 3: you don't have the murder weapon as evidence, when you
26:21
Speaker 3: don't have that, do you think sometimes we get lost
26:25
Speaker 3: on trying to prove thirty eight three fifty seven versus
26:29
Speaker 3: what the jury. We'll see, we don't have a gun,
26:32
Speaker 3: we've got four dead people who shouldn't be dead, and
26:35
Speaker 3: we've got one suspect to the crime and no others.
26:38
Speaker 3: Does law enforcement get wrapped up in the gun when
26:42
Speaker 3: it doesn't mean that much to the jury, when you
26:44
Speaker 3: don't have the weapon, How much does it mean to
26:47
Speaker 3: the jury?
26:47
Speaker 1: I think the jury's probably if you're saying that you're
26:51
Speaker 1: dealing with a homicide. One of the things that prosecution
26:54
Speaker 1: has to do is to try to explain to the jury,
27:00
Speaker 1: just as you had just mentioned, that you do have
27:03
Speaker 1: these four individuals that are dead at the hand of
27:07
Speaker 1: the accused, and that wherever that weapon is he wielded it.
27:12
Speaker 1: So a lot of that you have to combine the
27:15
Speaker 1: data that you do possess with the circumstantial evidence that
27:19
Speaker 1: they were able to develop along the way to try
27:23
Speaker 1: to understand this horror show, because that's at the end,
27:26
Speaker 1: that's what it all comes down to, and it's a
27:28
Speaker 1: combination of all of the information. You go to someone
27:32
Speaker 1: physically setting the thermostat in the house in order to
27:36
Speaker 1: drop that temperature down, and there's another little piece to this.
27:40
Speaker 1: There were newspapers deposited in the front yard that had
27:43
Speaker 1: not been being picked up, and that's another thing that
27:45
Speaker 1: you look for. You know, you look for stacked mail,
27:48
Speaker 1: You look for newspapers, that sort of thing that are
27:51
Speaker 1: being collected. And know what, you don't have evidence of
27:54
Speaker 1: an individual coming out of the home collecting these things
27:56
Speaker 1: and then they disappearing from sight. That means it jumps
28:00
Speaker 1: outside of the norm. That's another circumstantial element to this.
28:04
Speaker 1: Then you think about the people that are contained within
28:06
Speaker 1: the intimate circle. Certainly, make no bones about it. Mister Taylor,
28:11
Speaker 1: though he had a wife in California and he's got
28:14
Speaker 1: a girlfriend in Kentucky, he's spending time in this home.
28:18
Speaker 1: He's cohabitating here at least for some period of time. Well,
28:21
Speaker 1: he vanishes off of the face of the planet at
28:24
Speaker 1: this moment in time and beats feet for California, and
28:28
Speaker 1: you have to explain, well, what was your motivation for
28:31
Speaker 1: leaving this home? And then, oh, by the way, the
28:34
Speaker 1: four people that are domiciled there with you at least
28:37
Speaker 1: part time all have multiple gunshot ones and you're nowhere
28:41
Speaker 1: around and so you begin to pile on those circumstances
28:45
Speaker 1: and combine that with physical evidence, and you think about
28:49
Speaker 1: access and opportunity and motive, it paints a very bleak
28:52
Speaker 1: picture for him, and of course, as it turns out,
28:56
Speaker 1: on February the seventh, twenty twenty three, Taylor was executed
29:01
Speaker 1: in Missouri State Penitentiary. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this
29:10
Speaker 1: is bodybacks