Latest / Crime Stories with Nancy Grace / Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan: Murdered While Jogging - The Death of Laken Riley

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Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan: Murdered While Jogging - The Death of Laken Riley · Crime Stories with Nancy Grace

0:08
Speaker 1: Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan. When you're young and
0:22
Speaker 1: you jet off to college, after you've been under mom
0:26
Speaker 1: and Dad's rue for so long, and you've been through
0:29
Speaker 1: the trials, those trials that define high school, you think
0:33
Speaker 1: those are trials at that particular time. Then you get
0:35
Speaker 1: to college and it's a whole new world. And I
0:38
Speaker 1: found myself in this position many times where I just
0:42
Speaker 1: didn't think I could go to another lecture. I didn't
0:45
Speaker 1: think I could go to another laboratory meeting. I didn't
0:50
Speaker 1: think that I could be around these people any longer.
0:55
Speaker 1: And my solution to that for a good portion of
0:59
Speaker 1: my younger adult life was to go to the gym.
1:02
Speaker 1: I did run, I ran quite a bit, but I
1:06
Speaker 1: loved going out and just pumping iron, pushing iron, as
1:10
Speaker 1: we used to say, because it relieved that stress. And
1:13
Speaker 1: you know, out of all the academic pursuits, particularly at
1:16
Speaker 1: an undergraduate level, there are not too many that are
1:19
Speaker 1: more rigorous than nursing school. And the reason is is that,
1:23
Speaker 1: I guess you could argue that academically, you know, if
1:26
Speaker 1: you were an engineering or something like that, that is
1:28
Speaker 1: very rigorous, but it's the practicals, practicalms that you have
1:31
Speaker 1: to do the rotations, all those sorts of things, and
1:35
Speaker 1: you have to stay on top of your studies or
1:38
Speaker 1: nursing is so very difficult. You have to be able
1:41
Speaker 1: to apply yourself to the point where you are acutely
1:45
Speaker 1: aware of everything that you're learning and understand the application
1:48
Speaker 1: of it. You need time to let your mind go.
1:51
Speaker 1: And our case today that we're going to discuss involves
1:55
Speaker 1: a young lady who just wanted to have a little
1:57
Speaker 1: bit of peace, a little break, if you will, the
2:00
Speaker 1: rigors of academia and particularly nursing school. Today we're going
2:05
Speaker 1: to talk about the murder of Lincoln Hope Riley at
2:11
Speaker 1: the University of Georgia. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this
2:16
Speaker 1: is Bodybags. Here we go again, David. Another young life
2:24
Speaker 1: needlessly snuffed out before she's come into the fullness of
2:30
Speaker 1: adulthood where she's free of the bonds of the university life,
2:34
Speaker 1: where she's out on her own. She's trying to apply
2:37
Speaker 1: those things that she learns in college to make her way.
2:40
Speaker 2: Lincoln Riley, when you look at at her timeline of life,
2:44
Speaker 2: this was the daughter every father wants to have. Lake
2:48
Speaker 2: and Riley and mother Okay, I'm just this is a
2:51
Speaker 2: mom and dad's dream.
2:52
Speaker 1: Yeah.
2:53
Speaker 2: When people talk about Lake and Riley, they talk about
2:55
Speaker 2: how wonderful she was. Just nobody's saying anything bad, just
2:58
Speaker 2: nice stuff, and they back it up with you know,
3:01
Speaker 2: in high school, she was an honor student and ran
3:03
Speaker 2: track every year. Love running track, very athletic, very active
3:07
Speaker 2: in her church. And she goes off to college. And
3:10
Speaker 2: what does she do while she's on the dean's list.
3:12
Speaker 2: She goes to she completes her education at UGA, and
3:15
Speaker 2: then after that goes to nursing school. And she's still
3:20
Speaker 2: living near the campus of UGA, and she still runs
3:23
Speaker 2: every day. She's on the dean's list in nursing school.
3:25
Speaker 2: And by the way, very quick sidebar. My daughter, Hayley
3:29
Speaker 2: went to nursing school briefly when she realized that there
3:32
Speaker 2: are two types of people that go to nursing school,
3:35
Speaker 2: those who want to be nurses and those who think
3:37
Speaker 2: it sounds like it would be neat to be a nurse.
3:40
Speaker 2: Those who think it would be neat to be a
3:42
Speaker 2: nurse find out you got a lot of studying to
3:44
Speaker 2: do if you want to get through nursing school. Oh boy,
3:47
Speaker 2: And my daughter found that out and said I've had
3:49
Speaker 2: enough and chose a different path. Many people do. Lake
3:52
Speaker 2: and Riley was excelling at nursing school, excelled at everything
3:56
Speaker 2: she did. She goes out for a morning run, and
3:58
Speaker 2: she was a pretty regimented person. Her roommate knw to
4:01
Speaker 2: count on her, knew how long it has gone. Yeah, yeah,
4:03
Speaker 2: ye had to do those at the academics and to
4:05
Speaker 2: be on the dean's list and to be active and
4:07
Speaker 2: all these other things. Absolutely, she didn't return in her
4:11
Speaker 2: regular amount of time, and after a little while longer,
4:14
Speaker 2: her roommate got worried. She's not answering the phone, can't
4:19
Speaker 2: get up with her. Call the police. This is wrong.
4:22
Speaker 2: She's been gone way too long, hours too long, And
4:26
Speaker 2: that's when the police are on the gun. They go
4:28
Speaker 2: and they find her very quickly, less than thirty minutes
4:30
Speaker 2: from the nine to one one phone call to the
4:32
Speaker 2: time they find Lake and Riley. In that time, she
4:35
Speaker 2: had been running, taken off the path and beaten, sexually assaulted,
4:41
Speaker 2: and murdered and left in a heap in a weed
4:46
Speaker 2: covered forested area right there at the campus of UGA,
4:51
Speaker 2: near an apartment complex that housed the suspect. And his brother.
4:57
Speaker 1: I think about this, you know, for investigator, one of
5:01
Speaker 1: the things that we work upon. The kind of the
5:03
Speaker 1: underpinning is certainly time. And when you have an individual
5:08
Speaker 1: of victim that you can, I guess argue it could
5:11
Speaker 1: be argued you could set your watch by them, if
5:13
Speaker 1: you will, to use that metaphor that you know that
5:16
Speaker 1: when they're supposed to be there, they're supposed to be there,
5:18
Speaker 1: and if they're not there, you begin automatically to think, well,
5:21
Speaker 1: something potentially catastrophic has happened because you know that they're
5:26
Speaker 1: always going to be on time. What's the old adage?
5:28
Speaker 1: I try to teach my son this. You learn this
5:30
Speaker 1: in the military, to you know, to be earliest, to
5:32
Speaker 1: be on time, be on times. To be late and
5:34
Speaker 1: be late is unforgivable. And so I've always, you know,
5:37
Speaker 1: tried to do that. I fail more than I succeed,
5:41
Speaker 1: but I set that as my goal and I think
5:43
Speaker 1: that lake and if you're if you're aspiring to be
5:46
Speaker 1: a nurse, first off, you have to get up and
5:49
Speaker 1: show show up for your shift to relieve those individuals
5:52
Speaker 1: that are working in a clinical environment, and generally nurses
5:56
Speaker 1: have to interesting a lot of people don't know this.
5:58
Speaker 1: Nurses have to arrive at the hospital prior to their
6:03
Speaker 1: shift beginning, because you have a nursing meeting at shift
6:08
Speaker 1: change where you have to sit down and share the
6:10
Speaker 1: notes with the other nurses that are coming off, and
6:13
Speaker 1: they'll tell you what status of the If you're working
6:14
Speaker 1: on say a medicer's floor, you have to pass on information.
6:17
Speaker 1: You know, missus Smith needs this, mister Jones needs this.
6:21
Speaker 1: This is what we had to deal with on our shift,
6:23
Speaker 1: and so you're going to exchange this information and then
6:26
Speaker 1: the work actually begins for you.
6:29
Speaker 2: If you've ever had a loved one in the hospital
6:31
Speaker 2: for any length of time, you know that you got
6:34
Speaker 2: used to the nurses on your floor at the time
6:36
Speaker 2: of their shift, because that's the time you spent with them.
6:39
Speaker 2: They actually were your connection to the doctor and what
6:42
Speaker 2: was going on. Oftentimes it was the nurse who explained
6:45
Speaker 2: what was going on because the doctors were doing their
6:47
Speaker 2: morning rounds or evening rounds, they were in a hurry,
6:49
Speaker 2: they had other patients to see, and so it was
6:51
Speaker 2: the nurse who interpreted what was going.
6:54
Speaker 1: To be completely honest with you, I would much rather
6:57
Speaker 1: see a nurse than see most of the doctors that
6:59
Speaker 1: I've had nurses, I just find that, first off, nurses
7:03
Speaker 1: have their feet on the ground right, They're grounded in
7:05
Speaker 1: the reality of what you're facing. Most of the time.
7:08
Speaker 1: They understand the winds which way they blow. And so
7:10
Speaker 1: I've always I've always been of a mind that, first off,
7:13
Speaker 1: I was always going to be as kind as I
7:14
Speaker 1: possibly could to my nurse at any point in time,
7:17
Speaker 1: because I know they hold the key to either continued
7:20
Speaker 1: pain or relief. They also hold the key to whether
7:24
Speaker 1: or not those orders that the doctor has put in
7:27
Speaker 1: are going to get fulfilled and all of the things
7:30
Speaker 1: you know that come along with that.
7:31
Speaker 2: And so that's what she wanted to do and be,
7:34
Speaker 2: and she knew that exactly.
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Speaker 1: I don't know that I have that much of a
7:37
Speaker 1: servant's heart to be able to do that. And for
7:40
Speaker 1: her at this point in time, it seems as though
7:43
Speaker 1: she was cresting the hill, you know, academically heading into
7:47
Speaker 1: that home stretch to be able to enter into eventually
7:50
Speaker 1: enter into practice. But you know, as we can see,
7:54
Speaker 1: you know that that wasn't meant to be. And that
7:56
Speaker 1: that brings me to this issue of this individual that
7:59
Speaker 1: has been arrested. You said something just a moment ago
8:02
Speaker 1: that really struck me. Once the flag went up relative
8:06
Speaker 1: to this nine to eleven call, they were Johnny on
8:08
Speaker 1: the spot, and I say they referring to the public
8:11
Speaker 1: safety folks when they began to comb this area. I
8:14
Speaker 1: was really amazed because I've been appearing on news programs
8:17
Speaker 1: and all these sorts of things over this past week
8:19
Speaker 1: regarding Lacoln's death, and I was really captured by the
8:24
Speaker 1: idea of how quickly they showed up and found her.
8:27
Speaker 1: It normally doesn't happen that way. What can we learn
8:30
Speaker 1: from that? Well, we know that first off, she had
8:35
Speaker 1: a pattern.
8:35
Speaker 2: Her in the roommate knew that she was going to
8:38
Speaker 2: be running by the intramural fields out of Uga and
8:41
Speaker 2: by Lake Herrick, and so they already knew the direction
8:45
Speaker 2: she was going to take from where her apart where
8:47
Speaker 2: she was living, and the route it would take. And so,
8:49
Speaker 2: just to give you an idea of the time, twelve
8:51
Speaker 2: o seven the nine to one one call was made
8:54
Speaker 2: at twelve thirty eight, thirty one minutes from the time
8:57
Speaker 2: her roommate hung up the phone with nine one one.
8:59
Speaker 2: They found her and we're treating her. She was alive,
9:01
Speaker 2: when they found her.
9:02
Speaker 1: Isn't that amazing? Thirty one thirty Yeah, it really is
9:06
Speaker 1: that there was something, There was potentially a chance at
9:11
Speaker 1: that moment in time, and how in the world this
9:13
Speaker 1: crime was perpetrated without someone having noticed. But you know,
9:19
Speaker 1: it had to be kind of I don't want to
9:21
Speaker 1: say the right circumstances, because there's there's nothing right about this,
9:26
Speaker 1: but it had to be the perfect I'll say, the
9:27
Speaker 1: perfect storm relative to no one bearing witness to this event,
9:31
Speaker 1: where you don't have an eyewitness or potentially even an
9:35
Speaker 1: ear witness, but I can tell you what witness they
9:37
Speaker 1: do have, the witness they do have, and I find
9:40
Speaker 1: this amazing. Out of all of the charges, the most
9:42
Speaker 1: intriguing charge to me that they have heaped upon this
9:45
Speaker 1: individual is this interference with a nine one one call,
9:48
Speaker 1: because when you think about that, Dave, it goes to
9:52
Speaker 1: Laken's awareness of her surroundings, because if if she had
9:57
Speaker 1: not made a call, that would give an indication that
10:00
Speaker 1: this was a pure out and out ambush where she
10:03
Speaker 1: was taken unaware. She had an awareness of danger within
10:06
Speaker 1: her vicinity. And here's something else, here's another piece they've
10:09
Speaker 1: charged this individual with kidnapping, perhaps false imprisonment, they did
10:15
Speaker 1: not sure it's.
10:16
Speaker 2: They got an aggravated battery, aggravated assault, false imprisonment, kidnapping, hindering,
10:22
Speaker 2: a nine to one one call, concealing the death of
10:24
Speaker 2: another meaning he hit her body and of course fell
10:27
Speaker 2: any murder, malice, murder.
10:28
Speaker 1: The fact that they're charging the subject with kidnapping is
10:33
Speaker 1: fascinating because we know that we cannot kidnap the dead right.
10:36
Speaker 1: You have to have a living person in order to
10:38
Speaker 1: do this, So they have information about the circumstances surrounding us.
10:43
Speaker 1: I think a lot of what we're going to find
10:45
Speaker 1: out as the days in the week's past is once
10:49
Speaker 1: that nine to eleven call is. I don't know that
10:52
Speaker 1: we'll ever actually hear the call on a public forum,
10:55
Speaker 1: but we will get a sense of the verbiage that
10:57
Speaker 1: was used in there. But I can tell you this,
10:59
Speaker 1: I'm sure that as maybe she was attempting to speak
11:04
Speaker 1: to that person on the other the line, it was
11:08
Speaker 1: populated by fear in her voice, and perhaps it was
11:13
Speaker 1: the last thing that she ever said to anybody. I'm
11:34
Speaker 1: not much in crime fiction. I don't read crime fiction
11:40
Speaker 1: and big reveal here, I don't watch True Crime. I
11:43
Speaker 1: deal with it every day. It's just not something I do.
11:46
Speaker 2: If you did like it, you would see Joseph. It's
11:47
Speaker 2: got Morgan on a lot of it.
11:49
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know, and I just I can't bear it
11:51
Speaker 1: anymore than I have to. But with that said, when
11:54
Speaker 1: Thomas Harris wrote Silence of the Lambs and it was
11:57
Speaker 1: translated and adapted for the screenplay, there was a key,
12:01
Speaker 1: key comment that Jodie Foster's character had in there. And
12:05
Speaker 1: she's talking back and forth with one of her fellow
12:08
Speaker 1: FBI cadets, and the idea was, what do you covet?
12:13
Speaker 1: And the answer to that is you covet those things
12:16
Speaker 1: that you see, Dave. When we're talking about the death
12:22
Speaker 1: of Lincoln lacn Riley, you begin to think about people
12:27
Speaker 1: talk a lot about objectifying people. She had, I think
12:33
Speaker 1: been objectified in the sense that this individual laid eyes
12:37
Speaker 1: on her, that did this dastardly thing to her, and
12:40
Speaker 1: he wanted her. He did not want her for the
12:44
Speaker 1: purposes of money. He didn't want her for a quick conversation.
12:49
Speaker 1: He wanted her for something else, Dave, and he had
12:53
Speaker 1: to be able to see her. And that's that's the
12:55
Speaker 1: really chilling thing about this because we're adjacent to a
12:58
Speaker 1: wooded area, which she obviously eventually found in. And when
13:03
Speaker 1: you're in a wooded area like this, you can and
13:06
Speaker 1: if you look into the woods, if you're ever on
13:08
Speaker 1: a walking trail or anything like that, and you look
13:10
Speaker 1: off into the woods, you're in the wide open spaces.
13:13
Speaker 1: If you're on the trail, you can't necessarily see what's
13:15
Speaker 1: hiding in the brush. And I've thought about this, Dave.
13:17
Speaker 1: I really wonder if the subject had what I refer
13:20
Speaker 1: to as a hide in there where Laken happen to
13:23
Speaker 1: be in the wrong place at the wrong time, but
13:26
Speaker 1: she fit a type for him perhaps, and that if
13:29
Speaker 1: it had been any other female that was similar to her,
13:32
Speaker 1: maybe that individual would have been the target he was
13:35
Speaker 1: laying in wait. And I think in some of the answers,
13:38
Speaker 1: if he did in fact have a hide in the brush,
13:40
Speaker 1: there might be valuable forensic evidence in there.
13:42
Speaker 2: You know, there's some things we don't know yet that
13:45
Speaker 2: we will find out later. We don't know exactly when
13:49
Speaker 2: the attack took place. You mentioned the kidnapping charge at
13:53
Speaker 2: false imprisonment dash, and we know that she was alive
13:57
Speaker 2: when medics got on the scene, but she died. She
14:00
Speaker 2: was declared dead at the scene. Yeah, but she was
14:03
Speaker 2: alive when they got there, So we don't know how long.
14:06
Speaker 2: All we know for sure right now is when her
14:09
Speaker 2: roommate called nine one one and when police found her body.
14:12
Speaker 2: We know that Jose Ibara, the suspect in this case,
14:17
Speaker 2: lived in an apartment with his brother Diego five minutes walk,
14:21
Speaker 2: not five miles, A five minute walk walk from where
14:24
Speaker 2: they were staying in their apartment to where this where
14:27
Speaker 2: her body was found in a wooded area. And I
14:30
Speaker 2: was going to ask you about it, concealing the death
14:32
Speaker 2: of another Does that take it a step further than
14:34
Speaker 2: just dragging her into the woods? Is there more involved
14:38
Speaker 2: in that? I mean, does it require taking branches and
14:40
Speaker 2: throwing it over her body and things like that?
14:42
Speaker 1: Yeah? I think that we would probably think that, But
14:46
Speaker 1: it all depends on how the attorneys because you know, look,
14:50
Speaker 1: you can charge anybody with just just about anything that's
14:54
Speaker 1: reasonable under the circumstances. Is that a tell here? Does
14:57
Speaker 1: that tell us that since there was an attempt to
15:01
Speaker 1: obscure her from view, which is what that implies, was
15:05
Speaker 1: there an attempt to cover her with brush or or
15:09
Speaker 1: was she taken and placed into say a depressed place
15:13
Speaker 1: in the earth where she would be, you know, out
15:15
Speaker 1: of view. If that's the case, then what that means
15:20
Speaker 1: as far as what we're looking at with the perpetrator,
15:23
Speaker 1: it shows that they're purposed. And there's several things along
15:26
Speaker 1: here that we can learn about his actions that he
15:29
Speaker 1: was purposed. He had enough sense about him at that moment,
15:33
Speaker 1: Tom to know that he needed to hide her body
15:37
Speaker 1: to cover up this deed that he is perpetrated on
15:41
Speaker 1: Lacoln At this point Tom So it's yeah, it's a
15:45
Speaker 1: matter of did he obscure her, and if he did
15:48
Speaker 1: obscure her, what did he obscure her with? Did he
15:51
Speaker 1: break off branches or did he have cutting tool with him?
15:55
Speaker 1: Had he already cut off branches in preparation of this
15:58
Speaker 1: or did he know where a brush pile was perhaps
16:00
Speaker 1: or was it just a matter of him picking up
16:02
Speaker 1: pondstraw and leaves off the forest floor and covering her
16:05
Speaker 1: body with that. That's going to have to be that'll
16:09
Speaker 1: be sussed out and what we'll learn more about it
16:11
Speaker 1: that specific charge.
16:12
Speaker 2: In particular, some things that we know about the crime
16:15
Speaker 2: from Uja Police Chief Jeff Clark. He said that Lake
16:19
Speaker 2: and Riley died from bloom forced trauma, and he also
16:23
Speaker 2: said that it was a crime of opportunity. Yeah, he
16:26
Speaker 2: alluded to how they were able to solve this as
16:29
Speaker 2: quickly as they did to come up with a suspect
16:31
Speaker 2: and an arrest. I mean, it did happen fairly quickly
16:34
Speaker 2: because they used video cameras all over the campus and
16:38
Speaker 2: knowing they knew her route because she was a creature
16:42
Speaker 2: of habit and was going for this very specific run.
16:44
Speaker 2: So they were able to isolate her path where she
16:46
Speaker 2: would have gone, and they were able to track it
16:49
Speaker 2: using the cameras around campus, and they had a suspect
16:53
Speaker 2: on camera very quickly. I know, we'll find out more,
16:55
Speaker 2: but the first BOLO they put out was very specifi
17:00
Speaker 2: in terms of the physical how the person looked the
17:02
Speaker 2: suspect they were looking for, and it was so much
17:04
Speaker 2: that the first person they arrested that they detained was
17:08
Speaker 2: not Ibar. It was Abar's brother, Diego, right, because they
17:12
Speaker 2: looked very similar, wearing a similar attire and everything else,
17:15
Speaker 2: and he was That's why there were some people who
17:17
Speaker 2: thought there were multiple people arrested. There were not there
17:20
Speaker 2: is only one suspect here and they have him in custody.
17:24
Speaker 1: Yeah. When I saw the two mugshots, and they've famously
17:27
Speaker 1: been placed out there, you know for us all to see,
17:30
Speaker 1: there is a striking and you say, well, Morgan, that's
17:32
Speaker 1: kind of obvious. They're brothers, not necessarily, but in this case,
17:36
Speaker 1: these two guys do resemble one another significantly. And look,
17:39
Speaker 1: they both got criminal criminal history, all right, other than
17:43
Speaker 1: the fact that they are here illegally.
17:45
Speaker 2: Well, and I was going to say that became you know,
17:47
Speaker 2: we can actually separate two things here, because yes, it
17:49
Speaker 2: is important to note they are illegal aliens in this country.
17:53
Speaker 2: And I know that's probably not politically correct this week
17:55
Speaker 2: to say that, but that's the reality of how you
17:57
Speaker 2: describe an individual who is in this country illegally. They
18:01
Speaker 2: are an alien. That used to be the proper term
18:04
Speaker 2: illegal immigrant undocumented. Those aren't specific enough for me. When
18:09
Speaker 2: you have there are two ways to come to this country,
18:11
Speaker 2: the right way legally or the wrong way illegally. If
18:14
Speaker 2: you come the right way, the legal way, you know
18:17
Speaker 2: what you can end up doing. You could end up
18:19
Speaker 2: marrying into one of the most politically active families in
18:21
Speaker 2: this country. And become governor of a state you cannot
18:24
Speaker 2: pronounce the name of properly, Callifolunia. Arnold Schwarzenegger was not
18:28
Speaker 2: born in the United States of America. He has such
18:30
Speaker 2: a thick accent. The guy became an international movie star
18:33
Speaker 2: speaking English and became governor of it because he came
18:36
Speaker 2: here legally, right the true Now, these guys did not
18:40
Speaker 2: come here legally. They came here illegally. I say they
18:44
Speaker 2: being Ibarra and his brother, Diego Hosei. Ibarra came here illegally.
18:49
Speaker 2: Here's what happened. He came here September eighth, twenty twenty two.
18:52
Speaker 2: He married a woman because the political activists along the
18:55
Speaker 2: border are telling people how to come here illegally to
18:58
Speaker 2: get money for food, clothing, and shelter. They these political
19:02
Speaker 2: action people are telling them how to break our system,
19:06
Speaker 2: and that's what these guys did. So Jose married a woman.
19:09
Speaker 2: The woman has since come forward and said, yeah, they
19:11
Speaker 2: told us if we were married, we'd have a better
19:13
Speaker 2: chance at getting amnesty here and so or asylum rather
19:17
Speaker 2: not AMC asylum. Yeah, so they married. They had no
19:21
Speaker 2: real relationship, but they married, and they got here on
19:23
Speaker 2: September eighth. By September fifteenth, they had money in their
19:25
Speaker 2: pocket and they were busted to New York City, where
19:28
Speaker 2: they were given a place to stave, food to eat
19:30
Speaker 2: in cars to live on. It was so tough tough
19:32
Speaker 2: for them in New York City that after being in
19:35
Speaker 2: the country for a week, they were able to tour
19:37
Speaker 2: all around New York City, and Jose was putting pictures
19:40
Speaker 2: of all the sites they were seeing in New York
19:42
Speaker 2: living his best life, by the way, with money given
19:44
Speaker 2: to him by our wonderful government. That our government doesn't
19:47
Speaker 2: have any money that they don't take from you and me,
19:49
Speaker 2: So you and I paid for his vacation in New
19:52
Speaker 2: York City. When he came here illegally, and he was
19:56
Speaker 2: arrested in New York City, his wife, his legal wife,
20:01
Speaker 2: actually had a five year old son, not deep now
20:04
Speaker 2: Jose's son. He was either driving a car with this boy,
20:09
Speaker 2: an unregistered vehicle and the boy was not restrained, or
20:13
Speaker 2: he was riding him around on a motorized bicycle of
20:16
Speaker 2: some type a moped without any kind of a helmet
20:19
Speaker 2: or anything else. I don't know which one is correct,
20:21
Speaker 2: but either way, he ended up in jail for a
20:24
Speaker 2: laundry list of problems with You can't put a child
20:27
Speaker 2: in that kind of danger without getting trouble. He did
20:29
Speaker 2: go to jail on that charge. He did bond out,
20:31
Speaker 2: and he his wife divorced him, and he moved to Athens,
20:37
Speaker 2: Georgia to move in with his brother, Diego. Diego arrived
20:40
Speaker 2: here illegally back in April of twenty twenty three. Diego
20:43
Speaker 2: gets here in April, he goes to Athens. You got
20:45
Speaker 2: to assume they have some connection there, right. They don't
20:48
Speaker 2: just go to a map and pick out Athens, Georgie
20:50
Speaker 2: out of nowhere. But Diego was already there when Jose
20:53
Speaker 2: came from New York and moved in with him back
20:55
Speaker 2: in the fall. Diego had already been arrested three times
20:59
Speaker 2: by the time his brother arrived in Athens. Both of them.
21:02
Speaker 2: They're illegally living in an apartment. So well local cop
21:06
Speaker 2: start he knew Diego pretty well.
21:07
Speaker 1: Yeah, going back to what you had said about being
21:11
Speaker 1: what would be the commonality. I think that with Athens
21:14
Speaker 1: Clark County, they've promoted themselves as the sanctuary location where
21:18
Speaker 1: you can feel safe, whatever that means, and.
21:21
Speaker 2: So you're very illegal can feel safe.
21:23
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, where you're there and you can get a
21:27
Speaker 1: job perhaps which he you know, I think that one
21:31
Speaker 1: they had attempted to get a job with UGA, if.
21:35
Speaker 2: I did you so he actually got diego got a
21:37
Speaker 2: job there. But you know, when you sign up, when
21:40
Speaker 2: you fill out forms through a job, it's all your
21:42
Speaker 2: driver's license, soial security card, all the things that prove
21:44
Speaker 2: you're legal to work here. But he was working conditionally.
21:46
Speaker 2: He actually did work for a week and a half,
21:48
Speaker 2: but he never got a paycheck from UGA because they said, hey, man,
21:51
Speaker 2: you need to bring us, you know, the rest of
21:53
Speaker 2: your documentation, which he never did. And that's when they
21:56
Speaker 2: found out he had a fake green card, at which
21:57
Speaker 2: he was charged with.
21:58
Speaker 1: By the way, yeah and they I mean that's a
22:01
Speaker 1: federal offense. I mean that's kind of a serious charge.
22:05
Speaker 2: You're in a sanctuary county. I would imagine they would
22:07
Speaker 2: find a better way to treat them, right.
22:09
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, no kidding. And so but here's one other
22:13
Speaker 1: disturbing issue with this is that from a history standpoint,
22:17
Speaker 1: a criminal history standpoint, when you have this individual coming
22:21
Speaker 1: from Venezuela and into our country, you really don't know
22:25
Speaker 1: what you're getting here. You don't know if this individual
22:28
Speaker 1: has offended in an equally violent manner down there against women,
22:33
Speaker 1: which you know, if he has that propensity in his makeup.
22:38
Speaker 1: We don't know if there are other assaults that are
22:40
Speaker 1: down there. We don't know if there are other deaths
22:42
Speaker 1: that might be linked based upon his behavior. And of course,
22:45
Speaker 1: as part of an overall investigation, you want to try
22:48
Speaker 1: to understand that because then you begin to see how
22:51
Speaker 1: victims are chosen and then how they are treated after
22:55
Speaker 1: the event takes place that winds up in their death
22:59
Speaker 1: or permanent injury. And so it's going to be very important,
23:02
Speaker 1: I think, when all of sudden done to try to
23:06
Speaker 1: understand what happened to lacln in those moments leading up
23:10
Speaker 1: to her death, and perhaps just perhaps what's happened to
23:14
Speaker 1: other women who may have crossed paths with Jose. I
23:38
Speaker 1: think that right now, as we sit here and we
23:43
Speaker 1: speak to you, I think that the police have done
23:46
Speaker 1: a fantastic job relative to Lincoln's death investigation. One of
23:52
Speaker 1: the things that really gave me hope about this is
23:54
Speaker 1: I saw that not only was it the Athens Clark
23:57
Speaker 1: Police Department that was working this event, but they also
24:00
Speaker 1: brought in the assets from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation
24:04
Speaker 1: and I think some assets from perhaps the FBI. You
24:06
Speaker 1: had multiple eyes on this case, on the field, on
24:09
Speaker 1: the ground. One of the really interesting bits to this
24:13
Speaker 1: is that you had these agents that were going through
24:16
Speaker 1: the dumpsters and they're looking for items which we can
24:20
Speaker 1: only believe were probably clothing items that has been alluded to.
24:23
Speaker 1: If in fact, and since we don't know at this point,
24:26
Speaker 1: Tom anything necessarily about the status of Lacn's clothing, which
24:30
Speaker 1: is going to be key by the way, if it
24:31
Speaker 1: were the perpetrator's clothed perhaps isn't that fascinating that he
24:38
Speaker 1: perhaps had taken his clothes and thrown them away. Well,
24:41
Speaker 1: what does that go to? Well, first off, it goes
24:43
Speaker 1: to an awareness that he has potentially some kind of
24:45
Speaker 1: physical evidence on him. Remember what they said. They said
24:49
Speaker 1: that she Lacn was attacked, She's sustained horrible disfiguring injuries.
24:57
Speaker 1: They talked about facial disfigurement, that sort of thing, and
25:00
Speaker 1: that she was struck with an object. Now we don't
25:04
Speaker 1: know what that object necessarily is, but you had alluded
25:07
Speaker 1: to and right you were earlier that this was a
25:11
Speaker 1: blunt force trauma death, struck about the head, probably other
25:15
Speaker 1: areas on her body. It was the object something that
25:18
Speaker 1: he had shown up with. Did he have a hammer
25:21
Speaker 1: with him, did he have an iron bar, did he
25:24
Speaker 1: have a wooden stick? Or was it a weapon? You know,
25:28
Speaker 1: they use that term opportunity, Dave. Was there a rock
25:32
Speaker 1: that was utilized as some kind of bludgeon out there?
25:36
Speaker 1: And I've seen this happen before. Those injuries are very
25:39
Speaker 1: specific when you see how irregular they are and the
25:43
Speaker 1: damage that they can do. A rock it's not going
25:45
Speaker 1: to have real clean margins and real clean edges. It's
25:48
Speaker 1: going to be the surface of these little strikes will
25:53
Speaker 1: have individual little lacerations depended upon the surface that'll that'll
25:57
Speaker 1: correlate with the surface of the rock. So with in
26:00
Speaker 1: the overall strike of a single strike of this rock,
26:03
Speaker 1: you can have little tears in the skin that are
26:06
Speaker 1: within that strike zone that will would be unique to
26:09
Speaker 1: the surface of that rock. And if you can find
26:11
Speaker 1: that rock, you can find contact trace on there as well.
26:14
Speaker 2: They would be looking for that rock in that Oh.
26:16
Speaker 1: My god, yeah, they would be looking for the rocks.
26:19
Speaker 1: Here's my worry is that both that phone and that
26:22
Speaker 1: rock may have wound up in that lake, and that's
26:26
Speaker 1: that's certainly. I think that's a legitimate concern. I don't
26:28
Speaker 1: know if they have it. I hope that they have
26:30
Speaker 1: recovered it. But they referred to an object. They just
26:33
Speaker 1: didn't state what the object was, but they did say
26:35
Speaker 1: it was blunt force trauma. So they've got something to
26:38
Speaker 1: go on here.
26:39
Speaker 2: I need to ask you a question because, yeah, beyond
26:42
Speaker 2: the blunt force trauma and the damage to her head,
26:47
Speaker 2: the chief of police made a comment at the press conference,
26:50
Speaker 2: and it was they'd served a surge warrant on the
26:53
Speaker 2: brother's apartment. Yeah, and the chief of police said, we
26:57
Speaker 2: didn't really need that, We didn't need anything out of
27:01
Speaker 2: that apartment to prove who did this. He said, to
27:04
Speaker 2: get a conviction. Yeah, And it was kind of an
27:07
Speaker 2: offhanded comment. I saved it because I thought he actually
27:11
Speaker 2: misspoke when he said to convict. You know, he should
27:14
Speaker 2: have said a rest, but he was speaking from his
27:17
Speaker 2: heart off the cuff, disgusted by what he had seen.
27:20
Speaker 2: And he said and the reason he said this is
27:23
Speaker 2: because they've got it on video, Joe. They have this
27:25
Speaker 2: attack on video, I believe, And that's why he said,
27:28
Speaker 2: we didn't need that because you mentioned all the things
27:31
Speaker 2: they might have found in the apartment, which, by the way,
27:33
Speaker 2: they had to have found things, because well people saw
27:35
Speaker 2: them leaving the apartment with bags of stuff, so they
27:38
Speaker 2: did find things, but they didn't need that. That's just
27:42
Speaker 2: going to be the icing on the cake to figure
27:44
Speaker 2: out exactly what happened. But the bottom line is I
27:47
Speaker 2: believe they had enough of this on video to be
27:50
Speaker 2: able to know exactly what happened and when it happened.
27:53
Speaker 2: But when they say blunt forces trauma, what are we
27:55
Speaker 2: really I mean, are we talking about can you do
27:57
Speaker 2: that kind of damage with a fist? Do you have
28:00
Speaker 2: to have another object? Could And because it's a crime
28:02
Speaker 2: of opportunity, could it have been a stick, a branch,
28:06
Speaker 2: something that you know you mentioned rock Ted Bundy used
28:09
Speaker 2: a log as he went into the Kyomega house.
28:12
Speaker 1: Yeah, and he read totally hell against his poor women
28:15
Speaker 1: in there. And and yeah, in answer to your earlier question, yeah,
28:19
Speaker 1: you can use your hands. But they when they begin
28:23
Speaker 1: to talk about gross disfigurement here and this this trauma
28:27
Speaker 1: that this child has has sustained. First off, that's very
28:31
Speaker 1: difficult to accomplish with your bare hands. I think that
28:34
Speaker 1: many people think that it could happen. Well, yeah, if
28:37
Speaker 1: you're Mike Tyson and his prime, maybe so. But for
28:42
Speaker 1: the average person that's out there, you can strike people,
28:45
Speaker 1: they will have hematomas, you can bloody their nose, you
28:47
Speaker 1: can break their nose. But when at the level Dave
28:51
Speaker 1: that they're talking about here, this implies something else. So
28:54
Speaker 1: when they say object here, it smacks to me that
28:58
Speaker 1: it's going to be something that is. It's not going
29:00
Speaker 1: to be just some random stick. It's going to be
29:02
Speaker 1: something heavy. It has to have weight so that when
29:06
Speaker 1: that force, that force moving through space, actually that's powered
29:11
Speaker 1: by the hands slamming down while it's holding it and
29:15
Speaker 1: contacts that surface, that energy is transferred from the object
29:19
Speaker 1: itself onto that surface which it's striking, and you begin
29:24
Speaker 1: to look at things like, first off, you're going to
29:26
Speaker 1: have really bad lacerations where the skin literally tears, and
29:29
Speaker 1: then there's going to be underlying perhaps skull fractures. And
29:32
Speaker 1: that's I got to tell you, based upon what I've
29:35
Speaker 1: worked in the past and this sort of thing, that
29:37
Speaker 1: was what I was thinking about, and not just skull fractures.
29:40
Speaker 1: You can have WHATULD refer to as depressed skull fractures.
29:43
Speaker 2: So if you just imagine there, what's the difference between
29:46
Speaker 2: a linear skull fracture and it contrast.
29:48
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, if you have a linear fracture, it is
29:50
Speaker 1: literally that's what it means. And actually the term is
29:54
Speaker 1: I think most forensic pathologists the diagnoses is a linear fracture.
29:59
Speaker 1: But uh, forensic pathologists will use a term that's kind
30:03
Speaker 1: of odd called curvilinear, and it covers both, so you
30:06
Speaker 1: will have it won't be in a perfect straight line.
30:08
Speaker 1: It will literally have a curve to it. And they've
30:11
Speaker 1: created a term like they always do, called curvilinear. If
30:14
Speaker 1: you've never heard that before, it's kind of odd.
30:16
Speaker 2: But that's just kind of a crack in the bone
30:18
Speaker 2: where the bone stays even with itself.
30:20
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, it does, and you don't have this depression
30:22
Speaker 1: that sets in when you have a depressed gull fracture.
30:25
Speaker 1: Think of Okay, I'll give you a great example if
30:27
Speaker 1: anyone wants to understand what a depressed gull fracture looks like.
30:30
Speaker 1: Take a hard boiled egg, all right, and when you
30:33
Speaker 1: go to ap peel it, if you will take your
30:35
Speaker 1: thumb and press it into the side of the egg
30:38
Speaker 1: without destroying the egg. And once you may, once you
30:41
Speaker 1: transfer that energy from your thumb onto the surface of
30:44
Speaker 1: that egg you pressed just enough, that will create a
30:47
Speaker 1: depressed fracture on the surface of that egg that's very
30:51
Speaker 1: similar to what you get with a depressed gull fracture.
30:53
Speaker 1: You will get this fragmented bone. It'll break off in
30:56
Speaker 1: multiple pieces and there will literally be a dip on
30:59
Speaker 1: the external table of the skull. Many times with the
31:02
Speaker 1: press skull fractures, you'll see fragmented bone that will enter
31:05
Speaker 1: into the brain, dependent upon the amount of energy that
31:08
Speaker 1: is transferred from the object to the surface of the
31:10
Speaker 1: bone that causes it to fracture and shatter and go
31:13
Speaker 1: into the skull and go into the brain. So that's
31:16
Speaker 1: I think what they're looking at. If he is and
31:20
Speaker 1: this is going to be Dave, I think that we
31:22
Speaker 1: can safely say this is going to be a very
31:24
Speaker 1: bloody affair, and particularly if she was still alive, you're
31:28
Speaker 1: going to have her bleeding out. Perhaps with head injuries,
31:31
Speaker 1: you have aspiration many times coming from the nose in
31:33
Speaker 1: the mouth that would have potentially transferred onto him. That
31:39
Speaker 1: might be why they're looking for clothing because that's going
31:42
Speaker 1: to be damning evidence because these two people, to the
31:45
Speaker 1: best of our knowledge, have never crossed paths at all.
31:48
Speaker 1: There should be no reason on God's green earth that
31:55
Speaker 1: Lakan's blood or biological material should be on his person period.
32:01
Speaker 1: Now a defense attorney might try to argue differently, but
32:04
Speaker 1: we're not talking about him giving her a ride in
32:07
Speaker 1: a car. We're talking about a young lady out for
32:11
Speaker 1: a job in a forested area. What are the chances
32:16
Speaker 1: that they would have had any other kind of physical contact? None? Okay,
32:20
Speaker 1: admittedly he's only been in Athens for maybe a couple
32:26
Speaker 1: of months. Maybe, you know, where are they going to
32:29
Speaker 1: have an opportunity to meet up? But we're talking about
32:31
Speaker 1: a young girl that's not in a party and she's
32:33
Speaker 1: not going out clubbing, she's devoted to her studies. There's
32:37
Speaker 1: no reason these two should have ever crossed paths a November. Yeah,
32:42
Speaker 1: and so you know you think about that, what are
32:44
Speaker 1: the odds that that he would have her biological material?
32:48
Speaker 1: That's why. And let me go back to this quote
32:50
Speaker 1: directly because I found this very fascinating. Yeah, here it is.
32:54
Speaker 1: Chief Clark actually said Dave that the evidence is robust
33:00
Speaker 1: and that. That really caught my attention for official like
33:05
Speaker 1: that at that level to actually say, you know, he
33:08
Speaker 1: didn't say, well, yeah, we've got a few things. We've
33:10
Speaker 1: got we've got some trace evidence, and that's not what
33:13
Speaker 1: he said. He said the evidence is robust. What does
33:17
Speaker 1: that mean. It means that it's full, that there is
33:20
Speaker 1: a lot of it. And I just wonder about the
33:25
Speaker 1: nature of the evidence because you mentioned, you know, we've
33:28
Speaker 1: got CCTV, We've we've got a mute. I don't know
33:32
Speaker 1: how to say it other than an abruptly disconnected nine
33:35
Speaker 1: to eleven call. That's a digital piece right there. He
33:40
Speaker 1: the perpetrator, the alleged perpetrator would probably have some kind
33:44
Speaker 1: of cellular device with him. The odds are that he would.
33:47
Speaker 1: So is he pinging in that area? Can you put
33:50
Speaker 1: his phone there? Ergo? You can put him there with
33:53
Speaker 1: his phone adjacent to LAC And I don't know that yet.
33:56
Speaker 1: I think that we will find out.
33:58
Speaker 2: Based on the charges you've made a lot of not assumptions,
34:01
Speaker 2: but based on the charges you have tied together. I wondered,
34:04
Speaker 2: how why the kidnapping charge, Joe, I didn't know that
34:06
Speaker 2: until today.
34:07
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and correct me if I'm wrong in one
34:11
Speaker 1: of them. False imprisonment as well.
34:13
Speaker 2: Is that actually charges are malice murder, fell any murder,
34:16
Speaker 2: aggravated battery, aggravated assault, false imprisonment, kidnapping, hindering a nine
34:22
Speaker 2: to one one call, and concealing the death of another.
34:26
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you've got all of this working together and
34:28
Speaker 1: some of those things. You know, it's one thing to
34:30
Speaker 1: conceal a death. You know we have and this is
34:32
Speaker 1: not the case here, but we have cases that you
34:34
Speaker 1: and I have covered, like abusive corpse that sort of thing. Well,
34:37
Speaker 1: you can't abuse the corpse of a live person. The
34:40
Speaker 1: same thing applies with kidnapping or false imprisonment. You're not
34:43
Speaker 1: going to kidnap a decedent. You're not going to a
34:47
Speaker 1: false imprison a dead person.
34:49
Speaker 2: She was alive when they got there. They said that
34:51
Speaker 2: she was declared dead at the scene exactly.
34:54
Speaker 1: So you are you are preventing her from leaving that
34:58
Speaker 1: at that point in time, you have control over her
35:02
Speaker 1: and she can't get away. So that's what the police
35:04
Speaker 1: are saying, and they have evidence of this. They have
35:06
Speaker 1: evidence that she was sequestered in a specific location, and
35:09
Speaker 1: then you know why else, Let's just say that she's
35:12
Speaker 1: in a location where she is kind of covered. All right,
35:17
Speaker 1: she's got agonal respirations when they show up, maybe she's
35:20
Speaker 1: got branches laying on top of her, and she's got
35:22
Speaker 1: this incredibly horrific head injury. Okay, so let me get
35:26
Speaker 1: this straight. She fell down multiple times, injured her head,
35:32
Speaker 1: crawled off into the brush and covered and concealed herself.
35:35
Speaker 1: Is that what the defense might argue do? Yeah, exactly.
35:40
Speaker 1: You can actually extract a lot of information from these charges.
35:45
Speaker 1: I just hope that we'll continue to find out more
35:48
Speaker 1: because I got to tell you, Dave, as it's been
35:50
Speaker 1: reported in the news, this is the first homicide that's
35:54
Speaker 1: taken place at Uga in thirty years. I hope, I
36:00
Speaker 1: hope that it will be the last for many, many
36:06
Speaker 1: years to come. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is
36:11
Speaker 1: body Back